Motion's Commotions

In loving memory of Colin Hobbz Haywood.

I picked up The Little Prince expecting a cute story about a tiny blond child who travels through space. A few whimsical planets, maybe a moral about friendship, something I could read with a cup of tea and minor emotional consequences. 

Instead, I got ambushed by a fox who casually dismantled my entire understanding of love and grief in about three paragraphs. Honestly, it was a lot to sit with. 

But also, exactly what I needed. 

Love Isn’t Special Because of Who — It’s Special Because of You 

One of the biggest shifts the book gave me was this: 

Love isn’t magical because the person is some sort of unicorn. 

Love becomes magical because of the time, effort, and attention you pour into it. 

It’s the “taming,” as the fox calls it — the slow, deliberate choosing of someone, over and over, until they become woven into your world in a way no one else is. 

And this hit me especially hard because, for a long time, I misunderstood what love actually was. 

I used to think love was just the feeling someone made me feel — the warmth I got from their affection, the comfort of their attention, the way their actions made my world softer. I thought love was something that happened to me, not something I actively participated in. 

Which, in hindsight, is a great way to accidentally become a passenger in your own relationship. 

Because when you believe love is defined by how someone makes you feel, you stop noticing how little you’re giving back. You start thinking the relationship is thriving because you feel good — meanwhile, you’re not carrying your own weight, not showing up with the same intentionality, not doing your share of the emotional labour. 

It wasn’t malicious. It wasn’t laziness. It was just… ignorance. 

The Little Prince gently taps you on the shoulder and goes, “It’s the hours you spend showing up that make someone irreplaceable.” 

Not the butterflies. Not the comfort. Not the way they make you feel safe. 

It’s the work. The choosing. The tending. 

And honestly? That reframed everything for me. 

Because when you realise that love is built — not found — it suddenly becomes both more fragile and more precious. Time is short. People are ephemeral. Nothing is guaranteed. And somehow that makes the love you build feel even more sacred. 

The Grief I Carried, and the Grief I Carry Differently Now 

Before The Little Prince, I treated grief like a wild animal I wasn’t trained to handle. If something reminded me of my friend — a song we overplayed, a place we used to haunt, even a stupid inside joke — I’d dodge it like it was a pothole on the road. I thought I was being “strong” or “moving on,” but really, I was just building a world with fewer and fewer doors back to him. 

I look now at an eternal flower I was gifted. Intended for me to spray with a warm scent when reminded of him, but it gathered dust in a dark corner of my room. The thought of him hurt like thorns when it should’ve smelt like roses. 

It’s strange how you can lose someone once, and then lose them again and again by refusing to remember them. 

The fox cracked that open for me. He doesn’t pretend he’s fine. He doesn’t pretend the prince’s absence doesn’t hurt. But he also doesn’t amputate the parts of the world that remind him of what he loved. Instead, he lets those reminders become a kind of soft glow — a way the world stays connected to the prince even after he’s gone. 

That was the part that hit me hardest. 

Because I realised I’d been doing the opposite. 

I’d been shrinking my world to avoid pain, not realising I was also shrinking the space where my friend could still exist in memory. I was protecting myself from the hurt but also from the warmth, the laughter, the ridiculous stories that made him who he was. 

What’s Different Now 

I don’t run anymore. 

Or at least, I don’t run so far — progress is progress. 

When something reminds me of him now, I try to let it land. I let myself smile at the memory instead of flinching from it. I let myself feel the ache without treating it like a threat. I let myself remember the sound of his laugh, even if it makes my chest tighten. 

And the surprising thing is: the world feels bigger again. 

Grief hasn’t disappeared — it’s just changed shape. 

It’s less of a shadow and more of a tint. 

Less something I avoid and more something I carry with a kind of quiet pride. 

How Love Shows Up Everywhere Now 

Being with my partner now has taught me something the fox was trying to say all along: when you love someone deeply, they start showing up everywhere. In the colours I know she likes. In a scent you catch walking past a bakery. In a joke that doesn’t land but she would eat up. 

Her presence has softened the way I relate to absence. 

Because if love can echo everywhere in the present, maybe it can echo everywhere in the past too. 

It’s like the universe keeps leaving little sticky notes with her handwriting on them. 

But here’s the part I didn’t expect: 

My friend shows up too — just differently. 

Not in the loud, obvious ways he used to, but in small, surprising flashes. 

A song we once overplayed. 

A joke someone tells with the same mischievous timing. 

A warm, familiar kind of kindness in a stranger’s voice. 

Even the way the others talk about, childhood bliss, the same kind we used to share. 

For a long time, those moments felt like traps. Now they feel like gentle embraces — reminders that he mattered, that he shaped me, that he’s still stitched into the way I see the world. 

And instead of those echoes feeling like something I need to run from, they feel like threads — little connections that make the world feel more alive, more textured, more mine. 

The Lesson I Didn’t Expect to Learn 

The Little Prince taught me that love and grief are siblings. 

Both are born from the time you give someone. 

Both reshape the world around you. 

Both leave echoes. 

The difference is that love teaches you to see someone everywhere with joy, and grief teaches you to see someone everywhere with tenderness. 

And it feels that the fox was trying to whisper all along — that both are worth feeling. Both are proof that you lived, and loved, and let someone matter. 

Even if it hurt. 

Even if it still does. 

Even if it always will, in the softest way. 

A Small Note, From Me to You 

If anything in this made you think of your own foxes, your own roses, your own people you’ve loved or lost or are still trying to understand — you’re not alone in that. I’ve been in the messy middle of it too. 

And if you ever need someone to talk to about your grief, your heartbreak, or the confusing, wonderful, terrifying business of loving another human being, I’m more than happy to be that person who listens. No fixing, no judging, no “have you tried journalling” advice — just someone who kind of gets that these things are heavy, beautiful and complicated. 

Sometimes all we need is a place to set the weight down for a moment.