Wind, Sand and Stars

“You’ll be bothered from time to time by storms, fog, snow. When you are, think of those who went through it before you, and say to yourself, ‘what they could do, I can do.’”

  Have you ever wondered what it feels like to fly?

  Antoine Saint-Exupery reveals the pitfalls, dangers and adventures of flying a plane in the thirties and forties, but his anecdotes go beyond the flying experience. He will also make you float in the air through his musings and profound insights on life and human relationships.

  “Wind, Sand and Stars” is an invitation to fly away to distant places. This memoir will make you relish each moment of your life.

 The sour taste of tragedies and upheavals leads us to mold resilience, strength and comradeship. Saint-Exupery takes us on this path, while he inspires us to reflect on our own life experiences.
   His writing enchants and bewitches me, for he has the ability to put into words the emotions and feelings that we harbor in our hearts. His stories resonate on a personal level.

 As you enjoy his adventures you will visit different places: the Saharan desert, The Chilean Andes, the Argentinian Patagonia, the Pyrenees and many others.

 Reading this book is like embarking on a captivating journey to the past, present and future. His writing has the power to evoke childhood experiences:

“Gazing at this transfigured desert I remember the games of my childhood—the dark and golden park we peopled with gods; the limitless kingdom we made of this square mile never thoroughly explored, never thoroughly charted. We created a secret civilization where footfalls had a meaning and things a savor known in no other world.”

   Yet the greatest feat of this masterpiece may be the journey into the inner self and into the core of friendship and human connections. It has been extremely difficult for me to make a selection of quotes from this book.  I have savored each and every line, and I know I will return to them in search of wisdom and inspiration.

“Once again I had found myself in the presence of a truth and had failed to recognize it. Consider what had happened to me: I had thought myself lost, had touched the very bottom of despair; and then, when the spirit of renunciation had filled me, I had known peace. I know now what I was not conscious of at the time – that in such hour a man feels that he has finally found himself and has become his own friend. An essential inner need has been satisfied, and against that satisfaction, that self-fulfillment, no external power can prevail.”

“But by the grace of the airplane I have known a more extraordinary experience than this, and have been made to ponder with even more bewilderment the fact that this earth that is our home is yet in truth a wandering star.”

“Men are not cattle to be fattened for market. In the scales of life an indigent Newton weighs more than a parcel of prosperous nonentities. All of us have had the experience of a sudden joy that came when nothing in the world had forewarned us of its coming – a joy so thrilling that if it was born of misery we remembered even the misery with tenderness. All of us, on seeing old friends again, have remembered with happiness the trials we lived through with those friends. Of what can we be certain except this – that we are fertilized by mysterious circumstances? Where is man’s truth to be found?”

“Old friends cannot be created out of hand. Nothing can match the treasure of common memories, of trials endured together, of quarrels and reconciliations and generous emotions.”

"Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something molded. These prison walls that the age of trade has built around us, we can break down."

“I lay there pondering my situation, lost in the desert and in danger, naked between sky and sand, withdrawn by too much silence from the poles of my life. I knew that I should wear out days and weeks returning to them if I were not sighted by some plane, or if next day the Moors did not find and murder me. I was no more than a mortal strayed between sand and stars, conscious of the single blessing of breathing. And yet I discovered myself filled with dreams.”