Beloved: A love lesson.
Unique "in all the world"

There's a story about a well in the middle of nowhere.

When travelers reach it, they are usually very thirsty. When they pull the cord inside the well, the bucket carries a note and a bottle of water. The note is as follows:

"Use all the water in this bottle to prime the well. Don't drink any of it, because you will need all of it to get the water flowing. Pour it down the well and pump!

If you drink the water from this bottle, your thirst may be quenched for a while, but you will be thirsty again, and this well will be useless for you and everyone else who comes this way.

But if you use the water to prime the well, you will have an abundance of water, for now and to carry on your voyage.

Remember to leave a full bottle of water and this note for the next traveler."

What would you do? Would you take a chance?

Think of giving love like priming the well. 

Take a chance, give your full measure. You can't expect love if you don't give it.

Love someone. Start with yourself. 

You are "unique in all the world". Nobody else is exactly like you, not even your twin, if you have one. That should be enough for you to realize how valuable you are.

Consider the story of "The Little Prince"
(by Antoine de Saint Exupéry).

The Little Prince lived on his planet where he had just one rose, who told him that she was unique in all the universe.

When the Little Prince came to earth and passed by a rose garden, he was shocked.

"And he was overcome with sadness. His flower had told him that she was the only one of her kind in all the universe. And here were five thousand of them, all alike, in one single garden!" 

But then, The Little Prince met the Fox, who told him the secret of life:

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."

So The Little Prince returned to look again at the roses.

"You are not at all like my rose," he said. "As yet you are nothing. 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 other foxes. But I have made a friend, and now he is unique in all the world." 

"You are beautiful, but you are empty," he went on. "One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you -- the rose that belongs to me. 

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 put under the glass globe; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three we saved to become butterflies); 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."

Like the rose, you and I are "unique in all the world". But we let all the other things get in the way of seeing what is really important in life.

The job, the meetings, the deals, the social status and opinions, the feeling that we are worth what appears on the outside...all of these things are what make us forget how "unique" we are, and how unique our loved ones are. We're so caught up in the rat race that we become rats. We take people and things for granted until sometimes it's too late.

When's the last time you stopped to smell the roses?

When's the last time you told someone you love how important they are to you?

It's HOW we live and love that makes us "unique in all the world". 

As the sayings go, "Nobody says 'I wish I had spent more time at the office' on their death bed, and 'a security truck full of money following your hearse won't get you into heaven'." 

Find your heaven here, now. Love. Be loved. It's all that really matters. 

Put love first, and everything else will fall into place.

Wishing only well,

Carmen Colombo
June 2001

Read The Fox and The Little Prince