The Little Prince’s Field Guide to Creative Living
The art of spotting the elephant where the rest of the world sees a hat.
Published amidst the chaos of the Second World War, the children’s book Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is the most translated French piece ever written.
It is not only a beautiful novella about roses, sheep and planets told from the point of view of a stranded pilot — but a philosophical goldmine—brimming with lessons on creative living, each as pertinent today as they were over 70 years ago. Here are seven that you can take with you on your own creative journey.
Being ‘Grown Up’ Kills Creativity
The Little Prince playfully mocks the adult need to rationalize the world around them:
“I have lived a great deal among grown-ups. I have seen them intimately, close at hand. And that hasn’t much improved my opinion of them.”
Their need to assign numbers and names instead of feeling with their hearts and imaginations.
“All grown-ups were once children…but only few of them remember it.”
If instead, you can learn to reacquaint yourself with your heart and your imagination, then your creative muse might just re-appear as well.
Don’t take life so seriously…
On his adventures, the little prince meets a businessman who is forever counting all the galaxy’s stars so that he might own them:
“I administer them,’ replied the businessman. ‘I count them and recount them. It is difficult. But I am a man who is naturally interested in matters of consequence.”
His intense seriousness has left him with a lonely and mundane existence, in which he is unable to appreciate the wonder contained in the stars he owns. The businessman’s life is devoid of the non-essential. In other words play.
There are numerous studies showing that play makes us smarter as well as making space for creative renewal and although it can be hard to prioritise this in our busy lives, if you value creativity then you should try to stop taking yourself so seriously.
Leave some room for the imagination.
When the little prince first meets the narrator, he asks him to draw a sheep. The narrator tries drawing several sheep, but the little prince feels that they are all inadequate in some way, either too sickly or too old.
The narrator eventually gets frustrated and draws this instead:
“This is only his box. The sheep you asked for is inside.”
I was very surprised to see a light break over the face of my young judge:
“That is exactly the way I wanted it!
The little prince is delighted by his box. His imagination is free to roam in the unknown. You should never underestimate the power that a well crafted mystery box can hold on a reader or viewer’s imagination.
Be Satisfied With Where You Are
When conversing with the railway switchman, as express trains thunder past shaking the cabin, the little prince asks curiously:
“Are they coming back already… Were they not satisfied with where they were before?”
To which the switchman replies:
“No-one is ever satisfied with where he is,”
In today’s world, perhaps even more so than when Antoine de Saint-Exupéry first penned the Little Prince, we humans tend to be endlessly striving—seeking higher status, accruing wealth or chasing success—it’s rare to meet anyone who is truly satisfied with where they are at that moment. As Rudyard Kipling once quipped ‘…one day you will meet someone who cares for none of these things, and you will realize how poor you have become.’
Travel Broadens Creative Horizons
On another planet, the Little Prince has a conversation with the geographer who explains to him that:
“It is not the geographer who goes out to count the towns, the rivers, the mountains, the seas, the oceans, and the deserts. The geographer is much too important to go loafing about. He does not leave his desk.”
It is now well documented in the scientific literature that traveling gives us a more creative mind. New sounds, experiences, language and places spark different synapses in our brains.
As Adam Galinsky, a professor at Columbia Business School says: “Foreign experiences increase both cognitive flexibility and depth and integrativeness of thought, the ability to make deep connections between disparate forms.”
Making connections between seemingly disconnected ideas is creativity in a nutshell. So go ahead, grab a map, leave the desk behind and explore the world for yourself.
Creativity takes Time
When expressing her love for the little prince the flower says:
“Well, I must endure the presence of a few caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies.”
The same is true of creative living. There are no short cuts. Most overnight successes are 10,000 hours in the making. Don’t rush the process—better still learn to enjoy it—as creating anything worthwhile takes time, love and dedication.
See the World Through a Child’s Eyes
It’s not that people find it impossible to imagine the boa constrictor in place of a hat, but the vast majority wouldn’t bother to look. After all, it wouldn’t seem very sensible.
“But, whoever it was, he, or she, would always say: ‘That is a hat.’ Then I would never talk to that person about boa constrictors, or primeval forests, or stars. I would bring myself down to his level. I would talk to him about bridge, and golf, and politics, and neckties. And the grown-up would be greatly pleased to have met such a sensible man.”
You were born as a creative human. It’s the education system that teaches creativity out of you.
The pictures of elephants being eaten by boa constrictors are everywhere, if you only take the time to look and stop worrying about what the rest of the world may think. Only then can we begin to pay attention to that which is invisible and essential:
“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
This is the starting point for creative living.
Add a creative spark to your wardrobe…
By popular demand, the creative team at Litographs have crafted this design entirely from the text of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s timeless tale of roses, sheep and interplanetary travel. Feast your eyes on the design below…
