Sunday, November 11, 2007
The little prince has a problem. He has a proud rose in his tiny planet. Yet he loves her very much. He also has a goat that would chew everything. He left his tiny planet to search for a solution to protect his beloved rose from the goat.
The rose is not a simple flower with a few petals. She blooms beautifully, in rich red petals.
The little prince met many eccentric adults in the other planets.
Finally, he reached a garden that holds more than 5000 roses.
He realises that his rose, is not an unique rose. There are many others that look just like it. They are just as beautiful.
Finally, he reaches his epiphany.
The little prince went away, to look again at the roses. "You are not at all like my rose," he said. "As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one..." And the roses were very much embarrassed. "You are beautiful, but you are empty," he went on. "One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you, the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.- "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1943)
Is it the process of 'taming' or is it 'a habit of loving'?
I'd recently buried my beloved
dumb-dumb and I haven't been able to look at the fish tank the same way.
I've washed the fish tank, cleaned it, dried it. It is ready for a next fish.
But my heart is hardly ready.
Maybe to others, it is a joke. To have so much feelings for a tiny fish (that can't even talk) is a silly gesture. Its a
girl's thing. But all of us have different magnitude for different things, isn't it? Different priorities. Different preferences.
Subjectivity.
I feel acutely for this little life that has been with me for that short time.
Someone i've come home to.. someone who looked happy to see me when I'm home.
I can hardly stomach the thought of another goldfish.
I know I can simply replace it... and maybe I will even grow to love the next fish.
But my beloved
dumb-dumb will always retain that special place in my heart.
She has tamed me. Because it is she that I've bought from Caversham to bring home with me. It is she that I've left the lights on at night to keep her company; she that I've got to bathe in medicine to cure her of white spots; her that I've laid hands on her when she got ill; she that got me so worried when she buries her head in the plant; she that i did my hours of research on goldfishes.
There can only be one
dumb-dumb.
Just The Girl @
Sunday, November 11, 2007
