The REAL Most Interesting Man In The World
Wisdom from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Some people seem to pop up everywhere you look? For me, that person is Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who died in 1944.
I was first struck by a quote of his in Yvon Chouinard’s book, Let My People Go Surfing. Since then, I have seen his quotes in dozens of different places around the world wide web.
It is time to stop ignoring the signs and figure out who the hell this guy is. Obviously, beginning with the most reliable source on the internet, Wikipedia.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was a French writer, poet, aristocrat, journalist, and pioneering aviator. — Wikipedia
Digging deeper in his wikipedia and various internet bios, Saint-Exupéry was a commercial airline pilot, a pioneer of international postal flight, he flew in the French air force, flew search missions for downed fliers, negotiated the release of pilots who crashed their planes during the war, persuaded the US to enter WWII, directed an airline in Argentina and had his literary works translated into over 300 languages and dialects, most notably The Little Prince.
He has a French Howard Hughes feel to him.
The Desert Crash
In 1935, after nearly 20 hours in the air in an attempt to break the speed record in a Paris-to-Saigon air race, Saint-Exupéry crashed in the Saharan desert. He, along with his co-pilot, actually survived the crash. They were left to wander the desert for four days with limited supplies battling dehydration and hallucinations.
On the fourth day, a Bedouin [group of nomadic Arab people. Definitely had to google that] on camels discovered them and administered a native rehydration treatment that saved their lives.
I can’t tell if he returned to the crash site and the photo was taken after they were rescued or if he wanted to pose for Instagram before they started walking aimlessly. Or honestly, that might not even be him.
There are many more amazing stories like this from his life but let’s skip ahead to the lessons.
Wisdom from Saint-Exupéry
What originally drew me to him was his clarity of thought. He had a knack for distilling things down to the simplest terms. Below are a few of my favorites:
“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to take away.”
I love how universally this can be applied across all aspects of life. Work, creativity, design, relationships. Don’t complicate things. Focus on what’s important, leave everything else out.
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”
Yes. This is the height of confirmation bias for me. This pairs well with the different types of motivation discussed in Primed to Perform. He understood that people work differently based on their motivation. If someone is passionate about their work, they will work that much harder.
“The time for action is now. It’s never too late to do something.”
He was on that self-help game early. He knew how to pray on people’s insecurities long before these Johnny-come-lately’s. Kidding, it was probably genuine. But you could drop his philosophies into one of Tim Ferriss’ books right now. In fact, people are continually repurposing his quotes, as they are timeless. Ahem, like this blog post.
“True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new.”
It is easy to see how he was able to accomplish so much in his short, 44 years on earth. He had a relentless focus for doing.
“Mad is the man who is forever gritting his teeth against that granite block, complete and changeless, of the past.”
Good perspective to keep looking forward. Although, this might have been his excuse to be an jerk.
“Hey, why are you so mad that I slept with your wife? It is in the past. Quit gritting your teeth about it.” — Saint-Exupéry, probably.
I’m sure he had plenty of demons to go along with his wisdom. Pretty easy to scrub the bad parts after 75 years. But I’m okay to be inspired by what is left.
