IT IS ONLY WITH THE HEART THAT ONE CAN SEE RIGHTLY, WHAT IS ESSENTIAL IS INVISIBLE TO THE EYE

In the Little Prince by St. Exupery, the fox tells the little prince his [the fox's] secret, that is very simple.  The secret is: "it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye." The Little Prince was written in french and the quote above in french is: "Voice mon secret. Il tres simple: on ne voit bien qu'avec led coeur, l'essential est invisible pour les yeux."

So, what is this reference to seeing with the heart?  In the Little Prince, the fox had already helped the little prince to tame [become friends with] the fox.  The little prince told the fox about a flower on his planet that he cared about but was demanding and irritating as well.  The little prince then saw a field full of identical looking flowers and was dismayed.  "I thought my flower was unique in all the universe" he told the fox.  The fox then helped the little prince see that his love for his flower made his flower unique to him. The fox then told the little prince his very simple secret that: "it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye."   

So, what is the meaning of this quote as a guide to how we are to live our lives?  Well, our eyes are really quite remarkable in their ability to detect when things are not level or not where they should be. However, it is often overwhelming to try to keep up with everything happening around us only using our eyes. You might have noticed that you can drive somewhere and when you get to your destination you have no memory of the trip. This is likely because you drove based on stored information from your memory.  So, in that way you drove using your eyes to see what your memory was showing you from past experiences.  So, our brains have lots of stored information that our brains provide to us when we need it.    

It seems that trusting our brains to give us answers when we need them can be helpful.  An example of this might be the problem of worrying and feeling stressed before an exam and how this makes it harder to recall information that you have studied.  The worry and stress becomes the focus for our brains in an attempt to reduce this stress and this makes accessing stored information [what we had studied] much more difficult.  

So, is "seeing with the heart" related to trusting ourselves to know what is important in life and not letting ourselves be distracted by worries about the past and anxiety about the future?  What are you seeing?