Creative Relationships
The Little Prince
(1943), the children’s classic by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, contains some excellent tips on the subject of relationships.
The fox tells the Little Prince that thanks to him, the wheat in the fields will hold new meaning, because it will forever remind the fox of the prince’s golden hair. Meanwhile, the fox explains that the rose the prince waters is precious to him precisely because of what she means to the prince personally.
As the fox says, “It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.” The fox goes on to explain that, “One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.”
As de Saint-Exupéry explained, “The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched,” because such things can only be, “felt with the heart.”
Where we come unstuck is to let “stress forces” like fear
come after us and cut us off from our heart. Now, we lose touch with the all-important inner, personal dimension, and find ourselves marooned in the impersonal “without”.
When our relationships are stripped of creativity, all we have to fall back on is the functional aspect that revolves around set role play.
Then, we forget that it’s OK to keep our minds open not closed, and sometimes to have surprises to the upside... or to see punishing expectations set aside... or to let an offensive insult go. In other words, we can oppose forces like anger
and fear
- that would have us promote their
goals and pressed into their
mould.
Being creative from the outset, love is an end in itself, and looks after us without being told.
Fear
herds us through its false assurances, yet, like compulsive desire, its co-worker, wraps us in a tapestry of false identities. Love, by contrast, keeps us real in our self. In doing so, love opens up whole new worlds.
Love comes with no clever deceptions or pledges, but speaks honestly while offering real security - the only kind that there is. Fear
makes us so risk-averse that we crouch behind barriers and walls, never daring to put our best foot forward. Love asks us, instead, to emerge from our shell - and to go for broke through our vulnerableness and willingness to let go.