You have been so gentle with me. No hard kicks, very rarely do you stick your feet in my ribs and more often than not you move just a little to get more comfortable. A little twitch or push here or there and you settle down. You are most definitely present, though. Your body fills me up and I cannot bend or get on the floor because you are already taking up your space in the world. My belly is not just a kangaroo pouch that easily goes with me wherever I am. It is a body that requires some extra balance and protection. But you have been gentle.
I hope that you are not what they say boys are. You already have a sister who has cleared a wide path for you, brush-whacking away at all stereotypes with zealous energy. She is a doer. Not a destroyer, but most definitely a doer. But this post isn't about her. This is about you.
You are being named after an author and an apostle of God. An author who was inspired to write about Christ and his life. It's a hard book. But I promise that when the time comes, if you start with prayer, you will understand and appreciate every single word. You will be wise. James E. Talmage was not the best looking guy around. As far as apostles go, in my opinion. So do not think that we are naming you for anyone because of looks. In fact, please don't take it as a total in-equality when you see a picture. You are being named after a very thoughtful and humble man. Someone who had a great challenge set before him but took it on as humbly as possible and has made a most wonderful account of our savior's life. An account that has served the population well, though few have taken the time and energy that it takes to read the words. Like I said, it is hard. But you will be good at doing hard.
Not to diminish the prestige and importance of an apostle, but you are being named after an author. Not all apostles have contributed so much to the literature of the church and to be honest, none of them stand out the way Jesus the Christ does. So while being an apostle is awesome, it is the writing James E. Talmage did that set him apart. Had he not have written that book I never would have known about him. It is his distinguishing act that sets him apart from the rest and what I would like to focus on.
Having been named after an author, I have felt an extra connection to other books when thinking of you. Most particularly to The Little Prince. And even more specific, the character of the fox. You are my clever little fox prince.
I haven't the time, nor the energy, to write my own essay on the character of the fox, but I would like to give you something I have found:
The Taming of the Fox
When the fox and the little prince meet for the first time, the fox asks the prince to “tame” him. When the prince asks him what “tame” means, the fox says it means “to establish ties” (21. 16). The process of “taming,” he explains, they will come to mean something to each other and will need each other. Without “taming,” the fox says, the prince will be “nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys” (21.18). And to the prince, the fox is “nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes” (21.18). But after the fox is tamed, the prince and the fox will become unique for each other.
What the fox means by “tame” is to “make friends” or “to establish a relationship.” According to the fox, unless you build a relationship with a person and get to really understand him or her, that person will remain indistinguishable for you from the hundreds of thousands of people in the world—and you, too, will not be “unique” or special to him or her.
And how does the prince tame the fox? He sits down on the grass at a little distance from the fox and says nothing because, as the fox tells him, “Words are the source of misunderstandings” (21.37). The fox looks at him out of the corner of his eye and every day, at the same time, the prince arrives at their designated spot and sits a little closer to the fox.
Sounds like a process that requires enormous amounts of time and patience, right? Well, according to the fox, that’s the point. Building relationships and deep connections with people is hard work. The fox remarks:
One only understands the things that one tames….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.” (21.35)
After the fox is tamed, it is time for the prince to leave, and the fox is about to cry. Because of this, the prince worries that the taming has hardly done any good. But the fox says it has done him good “because of the color of the wheat fields” (21.49). The golden wheat will remind the fox of the prince’s golden hair, which will make the wheat fields a source of happiness to the fox – until he was tamed, the wheat fields meant nothing to him. Thus, according to the fox, it is our relationships that make the world around us significant and meaningful.
Love Medicine
The fox rescues the little prince from the despair he had fallen into on seeing a garden full of roses on Earth—until that point, the prince had believed his flower (who was also a rose) when she told him that she was the only one of her kind in the universe.
But after the prince tames him, the fox tells him to go again to see the roses in the garden, and that this time, the prince will see that his rose is indeed unique.
And this is exactly what the prince realizes. He tells these roses:
“To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you….But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered;…because it is she that I have listened to when she grumbled, or boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.” (21.54)
(Awww.) This is the most important realization that the little prince makes about his relationship, and it is the fox’s wise words that guide him to it.
“Life: A Guide” by Mr. Fox
The fox tells the prince a “secret,” which includes all of this:
- “What is essential is invisible to the eye.” (21.58)
- “It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.” (21.60)
- “You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.” (21.63)
Why does he call it a “secret”? Shmoop thinks that it’s the “secret” to meaningful friendships and relationships. And these, friends, are the fox’s final words before the little prince leaves him to continue with his adventures. He is now a changed prince: wiser, and fully equipped with relationship advice.
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