Tame
Me
“Just
that,’ said the fox. ‘To me you are still nothing more than a little boy who is
like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. 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 become unique in all the world...’”
Antoine
de Saint-Exupery (The Little Prince)
I had a
long conversation last night with a friend of mine who teaches school up in
North Carolina. In his younger days, he was in the Peace Corps, stationed in
Ukraine. He told me of all the hoops he is jumping through right now to get some
friends of his out of Ukraine and to America so that they will be safe. It’s
easy when looking at the news footage of strangers trying to board trains, or
stranded on congested highways, to forget that these are people just like you
and me—they had homes, and jobs, busy lives, and close friends just days ago,
and now they are fleeing with their babies while missiles and bombs drop around
them. Can you imagine yourself in that situation?
In this
excerpt from The Little Prince, the fox is teaching him about what it means to
be “tamed.” It does not mean obedient to or controlled by; it means having “established
ties.” Once you have gotten to know someone—even for a short time—you have
established ties with them, and they are no longer just a face in the crowd.
They are your friend, your intimate—"unique in all the world.” This
is such an important idea that Antoine de Saint-Exupery put in his beautiful
little classic. When we come to know someone as a person, even if they are different
from us in every way, they belong to us. We are bonded. We feel responsible for
them in a meaningful way. This doesn’t stop with people. If we have a pet—regardless
of whether it is a dog, cat, rabbit, bird—they are not just one of many. They
may look like every other animal of the same breed, but we “know” them, we love
them; we have tamed them, and they have tamed us.
What is
missing in Vladimir Putin and in his actions is eros—love. He is determined to
have what he wants and if a million people die, including his own troops, he’s
fine with that. This is a challenge for the whole world—we need to rediscover
eros—the power of love, the power of relatedness. Compare Putin, whose people
are out in the streets demonstrating to stop the aggression, to the Ukrainian
people, and their president, Volodymyr Zelensky. He is out with his troops,
fighting alongside them. He is in relationship with his people—they have tamed each
other. He’s not just sending them into battle, he’s going with them. And it’s a
beautiful thing to see them together.
This is
another moment when we can grow a little bit—push the evolutionary arc forward. We’ve had so many of them lately. Sometimes the universe ratchets up
the ante until we get clear about the problem and the solution. The problem is greed, narcissism,
callousness, indifference, and the antidote is love, relatedness, intimacy,
compassion. We will get there eventually; hopefully, soon.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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