You Are Not My Rose

In St. Exupery's The Little Prince, we learn the tale of a man whose life is changed when he is convinced by grownups to give up a career as an artist to become an master of the skies. The story is the recount of a man whose plane crashes in the desert, only to meet a strange little man who never answers questions, yet never lets go of a question once he has asked it. As we come to find out, The Little Prince lives all alone on a very tiny planet, where he cares for a few things...one of them being an exquisite rose that is one of a kind. To quote, he says:

"If someone loves a flower of which just one example exists among all the millions and millions of stars, that's enough to make him happy when he looks at the stars."

That said, I think the interactions we have with people can share that same quality. We can meet someone, and to us, they are the only one in all of the world. We can appreciate them, cherish them for touching our world, and we can know that no matter what happens, we have met up with someone and shared in an experience the likes of which no other human being will ever know. However, if we forget who we've become, or how to tell those people that they are special to us, it is possible to find that they are just like every other rose in the world. I've met a rose or two throughout my time. Each of them was lovely. Whether it be their beauty, their confidence, or their thorns (which are in fact more ferocious than a tiger's claws), they had something that forever made them special in my eyes. When you have to leave a part of your life behind, I think the most important thing is that we don't forget how to tell our rose from the rest of them. If we can do that, we'll always have a reason to smile.