Going Back to Where It Began
In the summer of 2019, I was working in Shanghai and one of the adventures that my friends and I did was to visit Tianzifang. It is this charming tourist attraction in the residential area of the French Concession that is filled with tiny boutique shops, cafés, and restaurants. You navigate through narrow alley ways to get from one shop to another which made me feel like I was in Diagon Alley from Harry Potter minus the wizards, witches, and dark magic.
In one of those alleys, we found this charming Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince) shop. They sell all sorts of dreamy, charming trinkets, and the interior is so homey that it reminds you of the wonders of childhood. I watched the film "The Little Prince" many years before and I have forgotten about a lot of details from that film and even how it made me feel.
But on that day... in that shop... I saw the mural of The Little Prince and the famous line:
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
I have recently read the book that my friend gifted to me and stumbled on that line again. Those words touched my heart, nay, my soul... there is something in that message that is just so pure that brings tears to my eyes and gives me a warm fuzzy feeling like snuggling under a warm fluffy blanket on a cold day.
Essentially, "The Little Prince" is telling us that people forget what is essential once they grow up. They forget about the wonders of life, the simplicity of childhood, and the emotional connection with people. When we grow up, things need to make sense all the time, serious, and heavy because we have responsibilities, bills to pay, and a reputation to uphold.
It made me contemplate that perhaps our dreams are the same as being "grown -ups." When we start out our dreams, they are simple, beautiful, and pure. However, once we work for that dream, we succumb to the pressure and anxiety along the way of making that dream into reality that we lose sight of the purpose on why we started to work for it in the first place.
It is easy to get carried away to keep up with the expectations of the society, the promise of fame and fortune, or the fear that our efforts are in vain. But we should not be drowned by the external factors that make us abandon the passion and purpose to achieve our dreams.
We are surrounded with things that are supposed to make us feel fulfilled and whole as a human being. Yet deep down, the little prince was right, we are blindly pursuing nothing because we forgot what is essential: the purity of our dreams...the reason behind them. It is important that we know exactly why we do what we do now, and we don't take the fun and magic that make it special for us.
I always have the notion that life is simple, and only humans are making it complicated. Going after our dreams should not be as complicated or problematic as we make it out to be.
Am I doing this for the fame, fortune, or out of responsibility? Or...am I doing this to make a difference, to make myself happy, or out of passion?
No matter what your reason is, at least you know where you can find what you are looking for. Your dreams won't be lost in a limbo of "grown-ups" who wander aimlessly. Reach to the inner child in you, and look through your heart to find the answer to the question "Why you do what you do?"
You might find that the answer can be as simple as the single rose or the water in the middle of the desert.
The stars mean different things to different people. For some they are nothing more than twinkling lights in the sky. For travelers they are guides. For scholars they are food for thought. For my businessman they are wealth. But for everyone the stars are silent. Except from now on just for you... when you look up at the sky at night, since I shall be living on one of them and laughing on one of them, for you it will be as if all the stars were laughing. You and only you will have stars that can laugh. (An excerpt from The Little Prince)