The aspirations that I have set for myself during the previous year and the twelve months preceding the last twelve months and also the twelve months prior and earlier on will once again make it to the list of resolutions for 2017.
It has been five years since I started blogging , the year my girls left home for their further studies. I still have not mastered the art of posting as often as some bloggers that I follow.
It has been five years since I started blogging , the year my girls left home for their further studies. I still have not mastered the art of posting as often as some bloggers that I follow.
Often much time
is wasted on dilly dallying as I can be indecisive about many things. I have cut down on
commuting unless absolutely necessary as these days traffic is horrendous. I
could use the time for reading printed books or articles on line. I have a
tendency to read the articles that
are sent to my inbox. Welcome to the era where our sense of community is not only the place where we live in,
it is also on the websites that we visit often.
On the last day
of 2016, I finished reading The Return of the Young Prince written by Alejandro.G.Roemmers and translated from Spanish by Oliver
Brock. The award winning artist, Pietari
Posti has been specially commissioned for the illustrations that
accompany the story. It is a tribute to The Little Prince whose author has good reasons to believe that he hails from the asteroid known as B612, a planet scarcely bigger than a house.
No longer content with his tiny planet, the young prince once again sets off to explore the universe. It is the story of the road trip taken between the little Prince and the narrator who has found the former as he drives down a lonely road in Patagonia and takes him on a journey. Once again the young prince has questions about humanity just like when he was the Little Prince and asks the narrator incessantly and the latter answers him arduously and patiently.
As Roemmers
narrates his story, he includes his thoughts and reflections.
‘How is that
possible ? Is reality on this planet not one and the same for all men?” asked
the boy, surprised.
‘Perhaps the
total reality itself is one and the same,’ I mused, ‘but we can only perceive
as much of it as our consciousness has evolved to perceive, according to the
strength of our senses. When we sift out of that total reality a few ideas,facts
and people that we agree or disagree with, in truth all we’re doing is
reflecting our own image.’
‘ Do you mean
thta people never actually come face-to-face with reality, but only with
themselves reflected through that reality?’
‘ That
becomes pretty obvious when you look at just how limited our senses are, and
that’s proved by machines that can capture sound waves at frequencies so high
or so low that our ears can’t pick them up , or microscopes and telescopes that
multiply our field of vision. But we don’t always understand as clearly that
observing our own environment and the things that happen to us is one of the
best ways of getting to know ourselves, because everything in the outside world
that affects us demonstrates that we aren’t in harmony with the corresponding
principles within us.’
‘ Why do you
say things in such a complicated way?’
he complained.
Roemmers gets the message across to everyone who reads the book that we
must open our eyes, our senses and most importantly our hearts and develop
purity. Have trust in our ideals and become aware of our being and live with a
purpose.
In the story,
the narrator tells the young prince :
“The way I
see it,’ I replied,’ to live is to learn. The more our consciousnesses develop,
the more easily we can distil the inherent meaning out of the things that
happen to us . Sometimes the pains and illnesses we reject are the ones that
could bring us the greatest spiritual riches. That’s why, whatever that gives
you the opportunity to evolve. Fate always finds a way to make us learn the
things we resist the most, the things we least want to accept.’
Though the book gets a little preachy
and moralistic at some point of the story, it definitely reminds us of the
values we should always carry with us as we go through life. The magic for the Little Prince cannot be recreated.Nonetheless The
Return of the Young Prince
is charming and a joyful read. It is a tribute and not
a sequel to The Little Prince, the heartwarming fable by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
Once again we are reminded of the famous quote from The Little Prince.
On ne voit bien qu’avec le coeur ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
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