In the classic The
Little Prince, the prince goes from planet to planet meeting with adults and
trying to understand grown-ups. Here is what he discovers on the various planets:
Planet 1: A man who wants authority and power.
Planet 2: A man who wants admiration and to impress and be
liked by everyone.
Planet 3: A man using strong drink to try to forget his
past.
Planet 4: A man who is too busy trying to make money to stop
and have a conversation with the little boy. He uses numbers in an attempt to
own as much as possible.
Planet 5: A man who is doing mindless work over and over
because that is his job. His one major goal in life seems to be reaching a
point where he can retire from this job that consumes most of his waking life.
Planet 6: A scholar who seldom gets out to experience real
life.
On Planet 7, which is named Earth, he meets a combination of
all the other six kinds of people, who are called grown-ups:
- These adults love
consider themselves the truly important things on their planet, and they adore
numbers and other marks of status.
- They like to hurry, but it is unclear where
they are headed in all their haste.
- They spend most of their time in closed
rooms hiding from the sun, stars, moon, flowers, trees, and the outside world.
- They are nearly all travelers, traversing their planet in search of something
which they rarely seem to find.
- They raise 5,000 roses in one garden but seldom
find what they are looking for in the beauty of a rose.
- Their ultimate goal
seems to be the taming of anything wild.
'Nuff said?
~Oliver DeMille, TJEd.org
