Lights Along the Road · Hiroshi Kanda
Chapter 56: Seeing Clearly With the Heart
The Words: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1943
In 1943, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry published a small book in French, with pictures he drew himself, called The Little Prince. It tells of a little prince from a tiny planet who travels from world to world and at last arrives on Earth. In chapter 21 he meets a fox, who asks to be tamed, which means to have ties of friendship made with him. When the prince has to leave, the fox gives him a secret. In my own words: one sees clearly only with the heart; what is essential is invisible to the eyes. The fox adds that the time the prince spent on his rose is what makes his rose so important.
The Life Behind the Words
Saint-Exupéry was born in 1900. From his youth he loved flying, and he became a pilot in the early days of flight, when planes were small and journeys dangerous. He flew the mail across deserts and over high mountains, often alone and at night. He wrote books about this life, among them Night Flight and the book known in English as Wind, Sand and Stars. In them he wrote about courage, friendship and the wide silence of the sky.
Once, in 1935, his plane came down in the desert. He and his mechanic walked for days without enough water, until a traveller crossing the desert found them and saved their lives. The desert, the stars and the deep need for friends all appear in The Little Prince. He wrote the book during the Second World War, while living far from his home. In 1944 he set out on a flight and did not return. The little book he left behind has been read by children and adults in a great many languages.
What the Words Ask of Us
The fox's secret asks us to look past the surface of things. The eyes see size, money, beauty and success. The heart sees love, trust, kindness and the time people give to one another. In the story, the prince has seen a whole garden of roses that look just like his own, and he feels that his rose is nothing special. The fox explains that his rose is unique because he cared for it. What makes someone precious to us is invisible: the bond we have made with them.
Think of Lucia, who is twelve and has a small, old dog with a grey nose and one ear that does not stand up. Other children have younger, finer dogs. But Lucia has walked with her dog every day for years, told him her secrets and sat beside him when he was ill. When a classmate laughs at the dog, Lucia is not hurt for long. She knows what the classmate cannot see. To her, this dog is not one of many. He is the one, because of all the time they have shared.
Similar Words From Around the World
Rumi, who wrote in Persian, opens his great poem the Masnavi, Book 1, with the reed flute. In my own words, he asks us to listen to the reed and how it tells its story of separation, longing for the reed bed it was cut from. The flute's music comes from something no eye can see: an inner longing, a tie to its home. The Little Prince, far from his rose, also learns that what he longs for is the bond he made. Rumi and Saint-Exupéry both tell us that the deepest things are heard and felt, not seen.
Cicero, who wrote in Latin, says in On Friendship, section 22, that friendship makes good fortune brighter and makes bad fortune lighter by dividing and sharing it. The fox would agree. Because the prince has tamed him, the fox says, even the golden wheat fields will now remind him of the prince's golden hair. A friend changes how the whole world looks to us. Cicero describes what friendship does; the fox shows how it begins, slowly, patiently, with time given freely.
Living It Today
We live in a world that values what can be seen and counted. The fox's secret is a gentle balance to this. A young person can remember that real friends matter more than the number of followers on a screen. A busy worker can remember that time spent with family is worth more than a little extra money. An older reader may find that, with the years, the eyes grow weaker but the heart sees more clearly, recognising what was truly essential all along.
This week, spend some unhurried time with someone or something you care for: a friend, a child, a parent, a pet, a garden. Give it time without measuring the result. Then ask yourself what you see with your heart that others might not see. Saint-Exupéry gave the world a small book with a large secret. It is still waiting on our shelves, ready to remind us that the most important things in life cannot be seen with the eyes.
Chapter 57: Still Believing in the Good
The Words: Anne Frank, 1944
On 15 July 1944, a girl of fifteen named Anne Frank wrote in her diary, in Dutch, one of the most famous sentences of the century. She had been living in hiding with her family for two years. In my own words: it is a wonder that I have not given up all my ideals, because they seem so foolish and impossible to carry out; yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are truly good at heart. In the same entry she wrote that when she looked up at the sky, she felt that everything would somehow change for the better, that this cruelty too would end, and that peace would return.
The Life Behind the Words
Anne Frank was born in 1929. On her thirteenth birthday, in June 1942, she was given a diary, and she began to write in it almost at once. A few weeks later, because her family was Jewish and in great danger during the war, they went into hiding in rooms behind her father's place of work. Eight people lived there in secret for more than two years, quietly, by day and by night. Anne wrote about everything: arguments and jokes, fears and hopes, books, growing up and her dream of becoming a writer.
In 1944, she began to rewrite her diary, hoping that it might one day be published as a book. In August of that year, the people in hiding were found and taken away. Anne died in a camp early in 1945, at fifteen. Her father survived the war, and in 1947 he published her diary. Since then it has been read in a great many languages, by young and old, and her wish to be a writer has come true in a way she could not have imagined.
What the Words Ask of Us
Anne's words are not naive. She knew very well what people were doing to one another; she wrote in the same entry that she could hear the approaching thunder and feel the suffering of millions. Her belief in goodness was not a way of looking away. It was a decision to keep her ideals while seeing the darkness clearly. That is what makes the sentence so strong. She asks us to keep believing in the good in people, not because the world is easy, but because that belief is what keeps the good alive.
Think of Lucas, who is seventeen and has just had a bad week. A friend let him down, and someone said something cruel to him at school. He is tempted to decide that people are simply unkind. Then his grandmother, without being asked, comes to bring him dinner and sit with him. A teacher writes him a kind note. Lucas does not forget the hurt, but he chooses not to let it decide what he believes. Like Anne, he keeps his ideals, and he becomes a kinder person because of it.
Similar Words From Around the World
The Book of Ecclesiastes, in the Hebrew Bible, says in chapter 3, verse 1, that for everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven. Anne's hope that the cruelty would end and that peace would return carries the same deep faith in time. Hard seasons are real, but they are not the whole of the year. Ecclesiastes speaks with the calm of long experience; Anne speaks with the courage of youth. Both trust that a season of peace will come again.
Marcus Aurelius, who wrote in Greek, says in his Meditations, 6.6, that the best way to answer a wrong is not to become like the one who did it. This is exactly what Anne did with her pen. Surrounded by hatred, she refused to answer it with hatred or despair. She kept her belief in goodness, and in that way she did not let the wrong change who she was. The old thinker and the young girl, nearly eighteen hundred years apart, give the same advice for living in a hard world.
Living It Today
This is the last light along our road, and it shines back over all the others. We began in 1900 with politeness as a sign of care for others. Along the way, we heard that we can live calmly in any situation, that we can love the questions, that the road is made by walking, that work is love made visible, and that we are all different and all good. Now, at the end, a fifteen-year-old girl tells us that people are good at heart. The poets, teachers and thinkers of this book lived in very different places and lives, and yet, with the echoes of older voices, they kept saying the same hopeful things.
So here is one last small thing to try, this week and in the years to come: when you are tempted to think badly of people, look for one sign of goodness, and then add one of your own. Choose a saying from this book that spoke to you, carry it with you, and let it show you the next stretch of the road. The lights are still burning. Anne Frank looked up at the sky in a dark time and believed that peace would come again. We can look up, too, and keep walking, with good words to light the way.