Beyond the Stars - Discovering What Matters

These days, while browsing through my library, my eyes fell on The Little Prince - a book I adore and occasionally open to a random page. In such a small book, there is so much wisdom, so much therapy for every person.

"The stars mean different things to different people. For some they are nothing more than twinkling lights in the sky. For travelers, they are guides."

The Little Prince is not a children's book - it is a book for every human being. It should be reread again and again as we change with the years so that its messages can be seen from different angles of life.

As a child, I remember reading it in school and thinking it was just a story about a curious little boy and his talking fox. With time, I realized that the prince, the fox, the distant rose, and the unusual people he meets represent something much deeper than a simple tale.

At a time of deep isolation, lost in the endless desert after his plane crashes, the narrator meets the prince. It is no coincidence that the prince arrives at that moment. It is a moment of solitude, where one can truly listen to their own thoughts. The ability to sit with ourselves, to reflect, to observe our patterns, and to understand the forces that shape our actions - to recognize our strengths and weaknesses, to discern when we act wisely and when we must realign ourselves.

The Little Prince sleeps within all of us. As children, he walks beside us without us even realizing it. Over time, he visits us less and less, like an old friend we begin to neglect, until we grow into adults who can no longer distinguish between a boa constrictor and a hat. Then, he only appears in rare moments - when we feel pure wonder at life, stirred by the simplest things: splashing in puddles on a rainy day or feeling a friend’s head resting on our shoulder.

"What matters most are the simple pleasures so abundant that we can all enjoy them...Happiness doesn’t lie in the objects we gather around us. To find it, all we need to do is open our eyes."

Each planet the Little Prince visits is an allegory of human nature and the flaws that steal life’s beauty. On six of the planets, he encounters vanity, drunkenness, greed, servility, narrow-mindedness, and the thirst for power. That each person seems to be the only resident of their planet speaks to human egocentrism - everyone absorbed in their own small, limited world.

"All grown-ups were once children… but only few of them remember it."

The more we grow, the more meanings we discover between the lines of this little book. One of its wisest characters is the fox. In the dialogue between the fox and the Little Prince lies the deep meaning of taming. To tame someone is to love them. We can only truly see someone after we have tamed them - not with our eyes, but with our heart. What we give - our time, our strength, and our love - is what makes the ones we cherish impossible to replace.

"If you tame me, we will need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I will be unique in all the world."

"It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important."