Collecting "Le petit Prince" - A big thank you to all the special, incredible people that are playing the game with me, year after year

"Now I always have a look around, when I am in some new place. Somehow, he has become my new habit", he says.

And I just melt.

This very good friend of mine is talking about looking for new, exotic editions of "The Little Prince" for my collection while traveling and/on being abroad for some time for whatever reason, and knowing that he remembers me and my special game makes me feel seen, loved and appreciated.

Collecting the book has been a serendipitous idea, something that I would not have expected and yet kept me company all these years, almost fifteen years by now.

And now, after so many years, my collection looks like this:

[My collection of The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

as it is in June 2020: over 100 books 

in around 70 languages and dialects]

According to the most recent data, the book has been translated into more than 350 languages and dialects worldwide.

Kaizen? Haragei? Ikigai? Just go for Kintsugi, the new and yet so old Japanese (buzz)word about perfect imperfection

Gold can be hidden everywhere.

So a couple of months ago, during a public speaking event, while listening to a very bad speaker, I heard for the first time about Kintsugi, the Japanese tradition, celebrated for centuries, of "upcycling" chipped pottery and vases with... golden glue.

Instead of throwing those "broken" pieces away, the Japanese artisans were able to embrace the concept of wabi-sabi, or finding beauty in all things and phases of life, without looking for perfection and completeness, and to transform those damaged objects into even more appreciated and beautiful pieces, special and unique, definitely more valuable because of their imperfections and "breaks" and not despite them.

[Modern reinterpretation of Kintsugi 

by Robert Puro, talented artist based in New Mexico

Image credit: Puro Kintsugi: From Broken to Beautiful]

How can this relate to you?

Hips don't lie, beards do. And people do it as well, sometimes - Part I

The first bearded man in my life was Mr. Cookies. 

He was neither the least famous bearded cousin of Ronald McDonald and the Hamburglar nor the older brother of the Gingerbread man.

[Gingy, the cute and valiant Gingerbread man of the Shrek series

No close relation with Mr. Cookies.

Well, at least not as far as I know. One never knows]

He was the bearded neighbor living on the first floor of my apartment building when I was a child. A quiet and peaceful man a little bit overweight, probably in his forties, married with a blond enchanting nice woman, he was always kind, smiling and fun to talk to.

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life’s about creating yourself.

George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950]

I have never been religious, not even as a child, but Mr. Cookies - this was his real last name, only translated into Italian, of course - was to me the closest thing to Santa Claus, that I had ever seen in real life so far. And probably also afterward.

So a bearded man was for me so far someone somehow friendly and helpful and such, but for sure not attractive or sexy. And not only because as a child I had not yet very clear in my mind what sex appeal or sexiness should be.

Then it was the turn of Candy Candy, of course.