Beautiful but Empty

"Men have forgotten this truth... The eyes are blind. One must look with the heart." --The Little Prince by Antoine de St.Exupery

The Little Prince, a story by the Frenchman, explorer, adventurer and nobleman, Antoine de St. Exupery recounts in an extraordinary way some of the most beautiful and deepest truths in the passage of a life. Writing the story of the Little Prince, St.Exupery writes about a person who lives alone on a tiny planet.

He has a flower, unlike any other flower in the galaxy. She is greatly beautiful to him. But pride ruins the serenity of his world, prompting him to travel afar, seeking solace.

His travel brings him to Earth where he makes the acquaintance of many; a fox finally tells him "the present of a secret" which enables the Little Prince to view his planet and his beloved flower through new eyes. The secret he learns, is what is really important in life.

Chapter 20-21:
Good morning said the roses. They all looked like his flower.
"Who are you?" he demanded. 
"We are roses," said one... He [the little prince] was overcome with sadness. His rose told him she was the only one of her kind... here were 5,000 of them all alike...
"She would be very much annoyed. I should be obliged to nurse her... to humble myself also, she would really allow herself... I thought I was rich with a flower that was unique in all the world; I had a common rose. That doesn't make me a very great prince." 
And he lay down in the grass and cried.

It was then the fox appeared. "Who are you? asked the little prince, and added, "You are very pretty to look at... "I cannot play with you. I am not tamed." "What does it mean--'tame'?"
 "It is an act too often neglected," said the fox. 'It means to establish ties.To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy, like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you... You have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me you will be unique in all the world..."

"I am beginning to understand," said the little prince. 'There is a flower... I think she has tamed me..." "If you tame me," said the fox, "It shall be as if the sun came to shine in my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Yours will call to me, like music, drawing me out of my burrow.' The fox continues, 'Your hair is golden, like the color of the wheat fields... I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat... Please--tame me!" exclaimed the fox.

"I have much friends to discover, and many things to understand."
 "One only understands the things that one tames," replied the fox. "There is no shop where one can buy friendship, so men have no friends anymore."
"What must I do to tame you?" asked the little prince.
"You must be very patient," said the fox. ' Words are the source of misunderstandings. One must observe the proper rites," said the fox.
"What is a rite?" asked the little prince. "Those are actions too often neglected," said the fox. 'They are what makes one day different from another."

So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near-- "Ah," said the fox, "I shall cry."
"It is your own fault," said the little prince. 'I never wished you any sort of harm, but you wished me to tame you."
 "Yes, that is so," said the fox.
"Then it has done no good," said the prince.
"It has done me good because of the color of the wheat fields." 'Go--again and look at the roses. You will understand now that yours is unique in all the world. Then come back and I will make you the present of a secret..."

"You are not at all like my rose," said the little prince. ..No one has tamed you and you have tamed no one... "You are beautiful, but you are empty. One could not die for you." My rose may look like any other, but she is more important to me than any other in the world because it is she that I have watered, she that I have sheltered, she that I have listened to, boasted to, grumbled to, or sometimes said nothing. Because she is my rose.
Returning to the fox, he said goodbye. The fox replied, "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: it is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye..." It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important." "Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "You must not forget it."
 The eyes are blind. One must look with the heart...

High Water

"Anyone so venal as to assert her [own] right to inherit... clearly knew no humility," writes author Thulani Davis. Davis, a thoroughly American woman, who records her search for her ancestors, the family that is her own inheritance continuing to the present. She writes of a time long ago, the struggles of that Civil War era family, and their lives. "[She] took an almost hysterical exception to Chloe's [the author's great-grandmother] ability to act on her own behalf, to exercise power over her own life..." My Confederate Kinfolk is a tale of a family struggling with the changes wrought in their world by the Civil War and  its consequences.

Davis writes ultimately about justice and her family struggle toward that end. You see, the family story isn't all that straightforward; it isn't all that apparent. Some parts fell, submerged into the passing of  time. Nearly forgotten, Davis rediscovers and tells a story about her ancestors. Her great grandmother, Chloe inspires her. Davis comes to see herself a part the story, just as much as her grandmothers. It's a complex story with surprising twists that the author openly explores, confiding to the reader her discovery.

Continuing with what she has learned, Davis writes, Sarah, (Chloe's sister in law) in tangling with Chloe, put herself in direct confrontation with Chloe's pragmatic, practiced world views. Views that had been tested through a lifetime of making family primary, "a preference for decision-making rather than dependency, and a dogged determination borne of already knowing what what one can endure."

"That first harvest... was an incredible victory over slavery, starvation, the loss of loved ones, and the terrible odds against many. It was a triumph for the bond between Chloe and Will and the promises that people make to live on, to keep going what has been built, and to take care of those who need help... a task we have actually chosen. Chosen not by force of a whip, but by our own determination to win another day. And this victory was sweet... to know so well the difference between a chance and no chance at all.
A freed [person] would know survival alone can be a triumph," a justice to know that she, Chloe was free. The rest of her life was in her own hands. Whether her time was long or short, her life was a gift to create; a sight that each of us possesses, a destiny that we are perhaps already where we ought be.