You will see how everything changes..

A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees. -- William Blake

I just finished re-reading Le Petit Prince for about the 10th time. If you haven't read this book yet, you are seriously missing out.. its even better when its read in French! I didnt come across it until High School when my French teacher Mr. Joseph made us read it. It has been a favourite ever since. It offers a new perspective on life and how you think-- in some ways it is the true romance novel.
In one section of the book, le Petit Prince meets a fox but they can't be friends right away because the fox has not yet been tamed. The fox asks the Little Prince to tame him so that they can be friends and so that life can be more meaningful. He explains:
"To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world..."
"My life is very monotonous," the fox said. "I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat..."

I'm not going to lie, I pretty much just want to copy and paste the entire book for you to read!! I love this section though, there is a principal so amazing that if you make something special and spend time with it, it somehow becomes special for you. Foxes and flowers tend to look alike but when you make one important and different it will always be different and you will never be able to see it the same way again.

There is a tree in the arboretum that I love to sit and read in, or write or paint. Its strange to think that something like a tree can be important to you, a tree is a tree but somehow it has become my own. I've tamed it or maybe its tamed me. Its taken on lifelike qualities in my mind and has become a friend. I recently came across a journal entry of mine about it, "For centuries trees were dead, not known to be alive. It is not until one knows and accepts that it is alive, does it become so. My tree lives because I decided it was so. It lives for me, and I live for it. Somewhere out there in the world, there is a tree that lives for me. For now that is enough."
Reading this now it seems really prideful to suggest but I think it brings up the same idea that 'taming' something is how you make it special. Somehow that process makes you special as well because you are connected to it. Its hard to put in words and I'm not sure its completely understandable until it happens to you. Go out and find something that makes you special because you've made it special!

Clearly Ronald Reagan was an idiot! "A tree's a tree. How many more do you need to look at?"