Excerpts from The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

[1]

“No,” said the little prince. “I am looking for friends. What does that mean– ‘tame’?”

“It is an act too often neglected,” said the fox. It means to establish ties.”

“ ‘To establish ties’?”

“Just that,” said the fox. “To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world...”

“I am beginning to understand,” said the little prince. “There is a flower...I think that she has tamed me...”

[2]

 “But he came back to his idea.

“My life is very monotonous,” the fox said. “I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow.

And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the colour of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat...”

The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time. “Please– tame me!” he said.”

…………………………………………….

A friend gave me this book and it is one of those rare things, simple and profound at the same time. This particular excerpt for instance. I would never have thought of the word ‘tame’ in this way but if you think about it when you develop a ‘bond’ with someone it is as if you become ‘tame’, ‘helpless’, ‘powerless’… they have power over you and you are tame at their hands, and maybe the tamed also have power over their captor because just as you believe you are tame, they might believe they are tame when it comes to you! They are no longer one among many to you and you are no longer one among many to them. There is pleasure in being tamed as there is pleasure in the sensation of life that it creates in you… the light that it lights up in you… where otherwise there would be a dull dark space.