Little Prince an Essay about Loneliness

by Leon de Castela

"A mark in every face I meet/ Marks of weakness, marks of woe" (W.Blake)"The advantage of big towns, a few steps and you recover your loneliness"(U. Eco, Foucault's Pendulum)

He lives in this small asteroid B612, too tiny to be considered a planet, and enoughto contain only one person. He has a disciplined life. He cleans his vulcans, digs small canals of water to nourish his rose, he pulls up the sprouts of baobab's trees, unless they would take over the entire asteroid. And at evening he melancholic sits and watches the sunset.

He longs for knowing other worlds and takes a holiday off. In the beginning he finds worlds like his, little planets with only one person on it. Each one is lonely like him and each one has its own way of dealing with it: booze, work, egoism, vanity, routine, pursuit of knowledge, just as the Little Prince's self discipline.

He travels even far away and reaches the great beautiful blue planet. He drops from the falling star and explores the land. But where are people? First, he climbs a very high mountain to find if he could see someone and shouts to the mountain "Be my friend? I'm alone." and he receives the echos "I'm alone", "I'm alone".

He lies on the grass and cries. He wanders a bit more and finds a fox, he asks her to be his friend, but the fox refuses and says that men only wants too capture instead of being a friend. A fox is a lonely animal.

He wander more and more and reaches the desert, the loneliest place of all, and, for his amusement, he finds a man, a pilot fixing his plane. The two talks and talks and they become friends after some refusals from the pilot saying that friendship involves commitment and when someone cares about others he becomes responsible for every one.

Today, people live in big cities full of people and there's a trace of loneliness in every face. Bitter looks, sad looks. As if we live each one in our own small planet, forever busy in our daily stupid routines like ants to scape loneliness. And what do we find? More loneliness. We live in places full of people, some countries have billions, but people still alone. How do we explain it?

There are two main problems for loneliness: lack of courtesy and lack of commitment. As long as someone doesn't want to be responsible for others he will be alone, and, in chain reaction, every one will be too. The other is the lack of courtesy. Courtesy is a weaker bond than the commitment itself. It's the first step, the courtesy opens the heart of every one and gives way to friendship and it makes relationships healthier. Love? well, I don't think love is great thing at all. People kill for love, they fight for it, die for it. It's now or never. As Dostoievsky said in his "Demons", "Love is not important, what's more important is kindness".

As long as we don't change our atitudes towards others we will be alone. The State won't make anyone feel less lonely. We have poor countries and rich countries, poor people and rich people and every one goes home at night and cry like the Little Prince. Lack of commitment makes people live together as two stranger in the same home, and if they marry is for the wrong reason, love, again, and the lack of courtesy kills their relationship.

Thank's for reading it.