This blog contains spoilers!
The Little Prince is a book written by Antoine De Saint-Exupery and a copy was given to me as a gift quite a while ago. It looks like a children's book yet it invites the reader to fill the story with their adult perceptions and their own imagination, paralleling the way the story begins. It begins with a message of lost connection with youth. The story involves a meeting between a little prince and a lost pilot. They become conversation partners and through their dialogue we learn more about life, identity, love and mourning. Through his meeting with the prince a renewed appreciation for love and delight in the world is restored in the pilot.
What I enjoy about the early aspects of the story is the message of how wonderful it is to allow space for another to apply their imagination. This is beautifully illustrated by the prince asking the pilot to draw him a sheep. He initially declines and expresses limitations but the prince continues to encourage him to draw a sheep so he does. The first one is judged to be too sickly, the second is not actually a sheep but a ram and the third is too old. Then the pilot applies a trick he learned when he was six years old and first learned to draw. Back then his painting was mistaken for a hat when it was actually an elephant being digested by a boa constrictor. Things are not always as they appear. So the pilot draws a box and tells the prince his sheep is inside. The prince beams as he accepts this and says 'that is exactly the way I wanted it'. I take this to mean that as much as we can try and give someone what we think they are asking us to give, we may be met with judgement and rejection. Instead, how about we respond in ways which allow others to imprint their perceptions when something is asked of us? Perhaps we do not really know another mind's keeper but we can continue to evolve openly and truly when we allow space for another person's imagination to take shape between us. I see this as the essence of my role as a cognitive analytic therapist. We create a working relationship and I invite you to bring your imagination into what happens between us.
It seems that our brains and minds are wired for survival so we learn to adapt but does this mean we lose our openness to seeing things as if it is the first time? Like the Buddhist principle of a beginner's mind? Through a therapeutic relationship we can allow the adaptations to surface, to be curious about them and create looser tangles between the thoughts, perceptions and beliefs tied to feelings. Feelings flow through time and space and come and go. The meaning we attach to them can change. In order to grow and overcome life's inherent struggles we need to be able to decide which ways of being will serve us. Which me do I need to be? We can reinvent ourselves and evolve when we give way to letting go of the ideas, beliefs, perceptions and thoughts that no longer serve us. To stop judging and rejecting the sheep and instead find space for our imaginations to work with us, to resist usual pulls and to just be and see what new me surfaces in this very moment.
I watched a film recently, 'Adam' from 2009 and starred Hugh Dancy and Rose Byrne. The film takes inspiration from The Little Prince. A different angle here, there is a couple who enter into each other's worlds and learn more about what it is to love. The title character Adam is autistic and Rose is his neighbour. I guess it comes across as a romance story in that they see the world differently but find intimacy together. Adam has a fascination with the solar system and space. As an autistic man, space centres in his life. He lives alone after his dad passes away. He works in a small office by himself. Adam meets Rose and things change. It makes me think about how when we meet another person, it is a bit like two worlds colliding. We each carry inside of us a sense that we are an author or lead character in the world we inhabit.
In The Little Prince, we do not know where the prince comes from and he does not answer the pilot when he asks. All it says is 'Thus I had learned a second very important thing. That his planet of origin was scarcely larger than a house.' I take this to refer to how our bodies are our planet of origin and perhaps sometimes in our quest to live as humans we may feel alienated from ourselves and others.
When we meet another, they cause ripples through our perceptions because all of a sudden things are not quite the way they seemed. In a scene where Adam takes Rose to Central Park, it was heart-warming to see her open up and enjoy watching raccoons with him. She initially invited him to come out with her to socialise with friends and he became overloaded so did not go. I wondered about intentions, Rose's intention to see Adam in a social event, perhaps to get to know him better? When in reality, getting to know him better was facilitated by Adam letting her in on his world. Talking about the planets and sharing a moment with her at a spot he enjoyed sitting in the park and their love developed.
When the prince meets the fox he learns a truth: 'it is only with one's heart that one can see clearly...what is essential is invisible to the eye'. In the racoon scene, although it appears as if they are looking at racoons together and smiling, the subtext is that they are seeing the same thing and experiencing joy together. There is something invisible that the viewer is seeing.
The racoons are in Central Park, they don't belong there but they just are there. A bit like in The Little Prince, there is a juxtaposition between expected ways of being which subscribe to adult stereotypes and maintaining capacity and space in ourselves for childlike wonder and curiosity. In the Little Prince there is a line 'grown ups love figures'. It speaks to a layer of adult to adult engagement devoid of depth, sincerity or emotion. How can you really get to know someone unless you let go of conventions and safe small talk? To love is to take a risk and reveal something about what it is like to inhabit your world and perhaps another can relate.
The film ends with Adam expressing a need for Rose to move with him because he depends on her to interact with people. Rose declines because she does not want this to be the reason they are together. The relationship ends and Adam moves away. He receives a copy of Rose's children's book inspired by the racoons. The book serves as a transitional object. It also offers another parallel with the story of The Little Prince in that the pilot looks up at the night sky and finds meaning in a star because of his experience with him. In The Little Prince there are different characters who are too busy and distracted to appreciate what they have. In meeting the prince and connecting with his star, it makes something meaningful out of something small. The book represents this for Adam too, a star to reflect on a loving connection, though lost it can live on through his attachment to this object. A kind of sentimentality based on a deeply enriching experience where both their lives were transformed by love.
I feel like the film and the book share the messages that people are full of wonder, our differences may divide us but they also give rise to new possibilities, a bit like an ever-expanding universe within each and every one of us. If we can keep space and perhaps just allow others to guess that the ideal sheep they seek is just hiding inside the box. When meeting with another, we can ask ourselves, do they exist just as they are and am I embracing all aspects of them? Like looking up at a night sky, different constellations and cycles of the moon mean that nothing ever stays the same. Why would we expect this of another person? When with another, together we can marvel at what makes us, us.
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