The Baobabs And The Little Prince (hidden Fears)
We are sure that the famous book by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, “The Little Prince”, is one of your favorites. If so, it is very possible that you remember one of his fears, one of the fears that the young protagonist used to suffer almost obsessively: the baobabs and The Little Prince.
As he himself explained, the entire soil of the planet was infested with baobab seeds. And something like that was a danger, since if one did not get rid of them in time, the whole ground would be pierced by their roots. The baobabs would grow into titanic giants in no time, huge monsters that would instantly collapse a planet as small as theirs. Until it explodes. And everything, absolutely everything, would disappear.
And then how to get rid of that danger? ” ” It’s a matter of discipline, ” explained the Little Prince. Routine. When you finish grooming in the morning, you have to carefully groom your planet as well. Those small bushes where the baobabs already grow must be regularly uprooted, taking care to distinguish them well from the rose bushes. Because the rose bushes are good, beautiful. While baobabs are dangerous. It is a very tedious job, but easy. “
What conclusion can we draw from this idea? The baobabs and the little prince did not get along at all. According to this story they are our fears. Our negative thoughts, those that we should not feed and that we must know how to start on time. Let’s talk about it today, from the interesting perspective of the famous Saint-Exupéry character.
Fears and cognitive distortions
The baobabs and the Little Prince tell us that we all have a fear. Or maybe several. Fear of loneliness, fear of being rejected, of failing. Fear of the unexpected, of snakes, of clowns, fear of what we cannot control. As humans, it is common to feel and experience the emotion of fear.
Evolutionarily it has a very simple purpose: to survive. To flee from what hurts us to guarantee our survival. However, it is necessary to ask ourselves the following question: Should we always escape from what hurts us? Sometimes, you have to know how to cope.
We all live with our fears more or less effectively. If we know how to control and manage them properly, they will not interrupt our lives to make us prisoners of these dimensions, because that is where the real risk of fear lies.
If I fear failure I will never start any project, if I am afraid of the unknown I will never leave my comfort zone. If I have an irrational fear of the unforeseen, I may choose to lock myself at home until little by little, I become agoraphobic.
If we let our reality become “infested with baobab seeds” little by little, they will grow unstoppably. By the time we lose our sense of control and allow our fears to overtake us, the baobabs will have grown so huge that our little planet will also end up collapsing. Bursting out.
Before it was a big tree, the baobab was small
Let us now recall an interesting moment in Saint-Exupéry’s novel. The pilot and the Little Prince talk about the need to eliminate the baobabs, at which point, our protagonist asks if the lambs could also eat the baobab bushes. To which, the pilot corrects him and indicates that the baobabs are not bushes, but giant trees, trees as big as churches.
It would take a whole herd of chic to destroy them. What’s more, you would need to put one elephant over another around your planet in order to kill the baobabs. Although at this point, the Little Prince added something with great success: Before being a giant tree, the baobab is small. A little seed.
So why not dispose of them in time, when they are still harmless? If we allow our fears to grow large, there will come a day when they will overtake us and completely immobilize us. So the best thing is to keep a simple daily routine.
A cleaning and growth routine: Feed all those thoughts and positive dimensions of your life, water the “roses” of your personal universe, discarding the bad baobab herbs.
Look in the mirror and convince yourself that everything you see is immensely great and positive. Dress your face with a smile and warm your heart with a simple illusion, every project will be worth it, every dream is good fuel with which to start walking. Never let those baobab seeds germinate and collapse your little planet. It is not worth feeding the negative or what hurts us.
Do you agree with this tale of the baobabs and the Little Prince?
