“Men have no mo…

“Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me…”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

So said the fox.  The Little Prince did tame the fox and thus they were connected.  “…If you tame me, we shall need one another. To me, you will be unique. And I shall be unique to you…. My life will be filled with sunshine. I’ll know the sound of footsteps that will be different from all the rest. Others send me back underground. Yours will call me out of my burrow like music,” said the fox. 
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince  

We have accomplished so much in this world – cars and planes and computers.  Skype.  Cell Phones.  Instant Messaging.  Each of these inventions have succeeded in shrinking our world into smaller and smaller and smaller bits – including the ‘spaces’ between us, our houses, our lives, our countries.  Yet the chasms that exist in this world yarn wider than ever before.  We’re too busy playing computer games, surfing Facebook,  Ebay or any other site that has drawn us in, ensnared us, that many of us have lost the sense of the world beyond it’s lit screen.  Is being ‘tamed’ by the internet really a connection?  How does this life make us unique to one another? 

Instead of sitting on a hill with family or friends to watch a sunset, we look at a picture somebody posted on Facebook.  By ourselves.  Want new shoes?  Buy them online and avoid the crowds and hassle and the personal interaction with the sales people. Order groceries online?  You don’t have to even speak to anybody.  Want to see a movie?  No need to go to the theater.  Just order it online and watch it in the privacy of your own home.  Want a vacation?  Forget the rush of the sea or the cool of the mountains.  Plan a staycation instead and spend your time surfing, each member of the family cut off in their own space.

At what cost have we grown into this new world?  What small pleasures are hidden in the darkest shadows which we never now see and what is lost when our interactions scroll endless through pixels and numbers and cables across thousands of miles that make us feel so close when we’re really not.  No one, especially me, is insisting that the days before these inventions were the absolute ‘good old days,’ but perhaps we have lost something that shouldn’t have been allowed to vanish.

Said the Little Prince to the snake:

“No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

My wish is that someday we can all be ‘unique in all the world’ to each other.