A few words on the essential

Gene Wilder as The Fox in The Little Prince

If you have not read Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince, or watched the Lerner and Loewe 1974 film adaptation, well, you must do both.

I would say it's far from just being a children's book or a children's film. But that would make me as blinkered as a grown-up. There is nothing wrong with it being a children's book or a children's film. There's nothing "just" about children's literature. Some of the greatest works for page or stage or film have been made with children in mind—but not just children.

The story is simple. The story is not simple. A little prince abandons his planet to get away from an importunate flower. He travels to gain knowledge. What he discovers is that all he needed was at home, but he was too selfish to see it.

And why didn't he see it?

He meets a fox in his travels on Earth. He forms a bond with the fox, taming him and being tamed in turn. By taming each other, by forming that bond, they become responsible for each other. But the little prince cannot stay with the fox forever. He needs to find a way back to his home. 

Before they part, the Fox gives him a gift. The gift he had been looking for in all his travels.

The Fox says: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

What is essential is invisible to the eye.

With the times in which we live, that can seem to be childish claptrap. Things of great consequence are occurring all around us. Matters of import. Titanic struggles for survival. And yes, those matter. They matter a great deal. But they matter because we grown-ups make them matter. Because we grown-ups create these struggles. Why? Because we can't discern what is essential. Politics, wealth, power: those are all visible to the eye. But they do not touch on the essential. They elide, they obfuscate, they ignore the essential. And that is that we are all human beings, all made of starstuff. There is no difference between us. What is essential is that you, and you, and you are all precious creations, unique in and of yourselves, worthy in and of yourselves. 

But we grown-ups, so many of us, can't see that. We cannot see rightly. We cannot see with our hearts. Our hearts are filled with fear and hatred. The grown-up world is a world of borders and business, of history and hate. If the world were one, truly one, those who maintain borders, those who exalt business, those who dwell on history, those who trade in hate would be out of jobs. And they are the ones who make sure that the people over whom they rule don't see rightly. They make sure that continue to miss what is essential.

I ask questions. I don't have answers. Trust no one who has answers, for they are, most likely, not seeing rightly. Those who do see the essential are too often not long for this world, rubbed away the barons of borders and business, by the harlequins of history and hate. But what is essential is still essential, whether one acknowledges it or not. It's still there to be discovered. Our sojourn on this earth as a species has been one long, slow uncovering of that essentiality, of differentiating between the truly consequential and the truly inconsequential. Wealth, power, fame are all ghosts. Hatred leads to a permanent death. Discovering what is essential is what can save us. It's the only thing which ever could.