Puer Aeternus Problem by Marie-Louise Von Franz
So one should always say, “Just because you are bored, and just because you are lazy, now you have to do a double amount of work, but good stuff!”
That puts an end to the boredom! You know that between the ages of sixteen and twenty suicide is very frequent and less so afterward.
People at that age often have that strange kind of melancholy sadness, and they feel like old people.
They have an expression on their faces as if they knew all about life and felt very, very old, so what would be the use of playing about with the others, of dancing with girls or with boys.
They retire into a kind of grandfatherly and grandmotherly attitude toward life.
This is only a symptom and simply means that they have not found the clue to the water of life, where they could find an issue for themselves, so they drift on in this way.
At that age it is technically difficult for people who are a bit different from others to find out what would be their possibilities in life, and then life gets dammed up.
Obviously we have the same situation here with the child who constantly and sadly looks at the sunset.
Next we learn that life on B-612 was not quite as boring as we had imagined, for Saint-Exupéry hears from the little prince that there
is a rose on the planet, that one day the seed of a rose came through space and landed on the little planet and has slowly grown, until a lovely rose has unfolded its beauty.
Saint-Exupéry finds this out because the little prince is suddenly terribly upset and constantly asks him if a sheep will eat roses?
If it does, then he can’t have a sheep because it must eat the baobab trees but not the rose!
So, indirectly, through this anxiety, the little prince gives away the fact that he has such a rose on his planet.
Then the description goes on:
But the shrub soon stopped growing, and began to get ready to produce a flower.
The little prince, who was present at the first appearance of a huge bud, felt at once that some sort of miraculous apparition must emerge from it.
But then the flower was not satisfied to complete the preparations for her beauty in the shelter of her green chamber.
She chose her colors with the greatest care. She dressed herself slowly. She adjusted her petals one by one.
She did not wish to go out into the world all rumpled, like the field poppies.
It was only in the full radiance of her beauty that she wished to appear.
Oh, yes! She was a coquettish creature! And her mysterious adornment lasted for days and days. ~Marie-Louise Von Franz, Puer Aeternus Problem, Page 67