It's really funny how it happened.

It was a mandatory read in French class in highschool (five years ago?)

It was called "Le Petit Sauvage" (I don't know if there's a translated version of the book somewhere - if I can get my hands on it, I might do it myself).

And very basically, it was the story of a man rediscovering himself as the result of a mid-life crisis. Also, it was a transliteration of the principle of 'carpe diem'. But it was also a book about not fearing the future, either, and treating oneself.

It still shapes who I am to this day - It's been told to me several times, before and after, that adults were really just people who had barely any idea what they were doing in the grand scheme of things, and mostly winging it - but that book nailed it into me, and I've sworn to myself not to lose THAT side of myself - the one that makes me wonder. The side people would call the 'inner child' - but that's not accurate, because really I see it more as the natural, non-suppressed state of the human mind that we are told to tone down or even completely repress to appear "socially acceptable", "productive" and "mature".