Column: Find your own little planet

I’ve been thinking a lot about “The Little Prince” lately. If you’re unfamiliar with the story by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the Little Prince is an alien boy who lives on his own asteroid and somehow finds himself marooned in a desert.

Despite the story being oriented toward children, it still resonates with me. I think the story is pertinent in my mind most because there are times I want a planet of my own, too — especially toward the stressful end of the semester.

Obviously, I can’t just summon a planet of my own and float away like I sometimes want to; regardless of my lack of jetpack or inability to master gravity, I’ve learned the value of small, quiet places I can call my own.

At home, it’s my avocado green bedroom that houses a record player and a comfy queen-size bed. At UNC, these small places can be harder to find.

Of course, I can find solace in my own dorm room, but there can be times where the outside world still makes itself known, even if the door is closed. With a campus as big as UNC’s, it can be hard to go someplace without finding at least one other person (or 15) trying to occupy that same space.

I do have a small space. It’s quiet, in one of the libraries that isn’t a popular study library, has a noiseless study lounge and is covered in ivy and surrounded by old anthologies.

No, I won’t divulge where this place is. A friend showed it to me during my first year, and I promised not to tell anyone else.

It’s special because it’s quiet, and it’s a place I can get away from the bustling world of the quad and the Pit and the classes that are weighing down on me.

I can go there and do my homework, write poems, listen to music or listen to the stillness that we all need to be reminded still exists in this hectic life.

It’s not always perfect — sometimes there are a few people in the study room as well, but it’s enough for me to decompress and most importantly, take a couple deep breaths. I want to call it magical, but this column isn’t supposed to be a sequel to “The Little Prince.”

Despite me not sharing where my place is, there are small places for you when you feel like you don’t have a place. When the campus feels like it’s closing in on you, there are places that you can slip away to — even if it’s to a tiny coffee shop in Carrboro or under one of the humongous trees on McCorkle Place.

So in the words of e.e. cummings, it’s good to find places that feel “as small as a world and as large as alone.”

I’ll take what I said back: My small space is really magical, at least to me. It’s a good feeling to feel small enough to forget about your problems for a while.

Because it’s normal to want to hide away sometimes, or even find your own little asteroid, even if that asteroid has crashed into a small section of a library.