"It is the time you waste on our flowers that makes your flowers unique," the Little Prince said when he realized that the world was full of flowers that looked just like his own. It is love that transforms the vast unknowable, the anonymous universe with all its chaotic eruptions of pain and joy, its life and death, with a world that we can live in and make sense of in some way.
. . . as I move out into the world, I live out my uniqueness, but when I dare to look into my core, I come upon the one common center where all lives begin. In that center, we are one and the same. In this way, we live out the paradox of being both unique and the same. For mysteriously and powerfully, when I look deep enough into you, I find me, and when you dare to hear my fear in the recess of your heart, you recognize it as your secret that you thought no one else knew. And that unexpected wholeness that is more than each of us, but common to all—that moment of unity is the atom of God.