After reading the novella “The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, a question that I have been thinking a lot about recently is whether I have forgotten what it is like to be a child. The book is a short story centred around how the author got to know the little prince. It is an adorable story that will leave you smiling and at the same time, crying as well.
In today’s fast-paced world where we are fueled by the need to achieve target after target, we sometimes forget to treat every day as something special and something to be cherished. We forget to be present and observe the world as a child would. As we grow up, I think it becomes easier and easier to lose sight of what really matters.
It then becomes easy to understand when someone without knowledge about the framework of our society is puzzled by why we are doing things the way we are doing them today. Why do we set goals without knowing why we truly set them in the first place? Why are we after money or power without knowing why we seek them? Why do we grow a garden when we never once stop to notice its beauty?
So, why is that as time passes our imagination which used to run so wild is being tamed by the beasts that reside and grow within each of us? Maybe it is because of an inbuilt error in all of us that we must conform and become someone our society would approve of. Someone who does not have their head in the clouds, who sets goals and plans ahead, who is mature and not “childish”. While it is very important to be someone who is prepared and someone who gets things done, it is equally important to stop sometimes and let our imagination run free, to allow ourselves to feel all those happy moments and all those sad ones and everything in-between.
The question we must thus ask ourselves regularly then becomes, how can I see the situations in my life as a child would? I think it is important to urge ourselves to question the basics on a daily basis, to understand that sometimes the complicated can be simplified, to allow ourselves the simple pleasure of hope and to let ourselves live in the moment. It is then, that our lives become unimaginably unique in the sense of being simple but at the same time deep and meaningful as well.
Maybe then, the next time you come across someone who is not worried about anyone besides themselves, who is doing things without knowing why, who is never really present or kind, you can smile and strongly believe that you know what you are looking for in life.
So, while it is true that everyone grows up, I hope that after reading this we all remember to look up sometimes, to enjoy that sunrise, to laugh at nothing and everything, to cry, to smile at the little things, to look at things with our heart and not only with our eyes and to never forget what it is to be a child.
