The Little Prince and The Pressure to Have Your Life Figured Out

At some point in your life, growing up starts to feel less like discovering who you are and more like proving who you will become. 

Between choosing a major, building a resume, finding internships and volunteer positions, and planning for a future you cannot even imagine. We are constantly reminded to never stay stagnant in life and that the decisions we make today will be the sole determinant of whether or not we will be successful. 

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince lets readers consider this situation from a different perspective. 

Throughout the novel, the Little Prince meets adults who are consumed by either number, authority, or their accomplishments. The businessman, for example, spends his time counting stars because he believes owning more of them makes him more important; the king is obsessed with ruling over others, yet has no kingdom to govern. Each and every one of those adults is so focused on proving their importance that they forget to think about what actually makes life meaningful. 

Does this sound familiar?

In today’s day, we might not spend our days counting the number of stars in our sky, but we count our achievements. We measure out progress in life through GPAs, LinkedIn connections, internships, and the number of things that we can add to our resume. Even our hobbies start to become another opportunity to improve ourselves. As time flies, rest starts to feel unproductive, and enjoying the present becomes difficult when we are constantly thinking about our future. 

What makes The Little Prince so meaningful is its reminder that life is not simply a series of milestones to complete. The Little Prince values those he tames, the places he visits, and his experiences to understand himself. He reminds us that not everything meaningful can be measured.

This is not to say that planning for your future does not matter; it does. Having goals to achieve can give us direction, and working towards those goals can be extremely rewarding. But there is a difference between working towards the life we want and being so worried about that life that we forget to live the one we presently reside in. 

Maybe we do not need to have absolutely everything figured out just yet. Maybe growing up means exploring what you want and living in the present rather than becoming the most accomplished person in a room as soon as possible. 

We have our entire lives to figure out who we want to be. We should make sure we enjoy being who we are, too. 

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