Today, we're going to talk about 5 life lessons I've learnt from the kids'
book The Little Prince. Welcome to 5 Mins 5 Ideas, I'm your host
Samanvay. The Little Prince is one of the most popular kids book.
Originally written in french, it's been translated to
over 345 languages! It's a simple story about the encounter
of a pilot who has crash-landed into a desert
and a little prince from a foreign planet but during the course of the
encounter the pilot ends up learning a lot of
things from the little prince. The first lesson I learnt
is the importance of having an open mind the book starts off by narrating the
childhood of the pilot it talks about how he used to be inspired deeply by
documentaries about nature he learned that a boa constrictor could swallow its
prey whole, hibernate up to six months to
digest the food. So this inspired him to draw a picture of a boa
constrictor with an elephant inside and he took this
drawing and showed it to an adult who thought it was actually
a hat. So the pilot as a little kid went on to draw the x-ray image of an
elephant inside the boa constrictor. The kid
concludes that grown-ups always had to have everything explained
to them. As simple as this statement is, it underlines the fact that grown-ups
lack the imagination of kids. As the kid grew up into the
pilot he would always carry around the image of the boa constrictor with him.
Any grown-up he had to talk to he would first show that drawing and if they
concluded that it was a hat and not a boa constrictor swallowing an
elephant who would know not to talk to them about primeval
forest or stars but to instead talk about neckties,
bridge, golf or politics and the grown-ups would often think of him as a
sensible man. The second lesson I learnt from the book is
what really matters in life. As the pilot tells us more about the little prince
he highlights the fact that the little prince is from a planet called
B-612. He also highlights that the only reason he told us the exact detail
and the name of the planet is because we are a grown up
and because of the grown-up ways and what he means by that is that
if you were to tell a grown-up that you've just made a new friend, they'll
never ask you questions about what really
matters what does he sound like what game does he like playing does he like
collecting butterflies. Instead the grown-up would ask you how
old your friend is whether he has got any brothers, how much money does his dad
make? The pilot highlights that we always care about things that don't really
matter as much such as money someone earns someone's
age instead you really should be focusing on
on the character of the person. The third lesson I learnt is the
importance of removing bad habits early as the pilot and the
little prince keep talking the pilot soon learns the
planet of the little prince is quite small and during a discussion
about planting seeds the little prince highlights that on his planet
there's good and bad seeds so the good seeds are the ones that give you flowers
and the bad seeds are baobab seeds and if you know anything about baobab trees
is that they grow up to be huge the little prince highlights that it's
extremely important to get rid of those baobab
seeds before they get a chance to grow too big because they will end up
destroying the little planet the analogy of this story is that the baobab tree
seed represent a bad habit that we see coming
up in ourselves and it's important to get rid of those
as soon as you spot them. The fourth lesson I learnt is how
harmful excessive accumulation of money can really be. As the little prince
leaves his planet B-612 to explore all of the worlds out there. He comes
across many planets with eccentric inhabitants. One of the planets he goes
to is inhabited by a man dressed in suit
and tie sitting at a desk and all he's doing is
mindless calculations. This is an analogy of grown-ups making
as much money as they can just for the sake of it and as the
little prince comes onto the planet he starts questioning the man.
The man in the suit talks about how he's only been interrupted three times from
counting and one of them is when he got an attack of rheumatism
because he wasn't getting too much exercise. Now this is a perfect analogy
for the busy life that we live today where a lot of us
often take our work so seriously to neglect our health and well-being. The
fifth lesson I learnt is busy is our creation. The fifth planet
that the little prince goes to is inhabited by a lamplighter and a lamp.
As the little prince lands on the planet he notices
all the lamplighter is doing is turning on the lamp and turning off the lamp
every minute the little prince naturally questions the lamplighter who says that
he's only doing it because those are the orders and the little prince
is confused as to how absurd these orders are and naturally the lamplighter
goes on to say that every year the planet has been turning faster and
faster so the day on the planet only lasts a minute therefore he has never
got any time to rest and he's just so busy and the little prince naturally
suggests that if only the lamplighter were to walk slowly towards the sun the
day for him will last as long as possible
the lamplighter quickly dismisses it and highlights how
important it is that he carry out his order as he sees fit and i think the
story has a very strong parallel to our daily lives
as we spend so much of our time working and we pretend that we don't really have
much time to relax and you have to stop and wonder whether
or not those are restrictions we're putting on ourselves just like
the lamplighter. That wraps up five lessons I've learned from the book The
Little Prince. If you enjoyed the video be sure to like and subscribe and I'll
see you next time.