"You are a Prince," my mother told me when I was an 11 year old, growing up in Botswana..... My mouth hanging open and with a stupefied look on my face, she continued to tell me that my father was a Polish Prince and that this meant that I also held the title of His Serene Highness.
This post may include affiliate links.
Sufficed to say, this was turning into the best day of my life and my 11 year old brain was going into hyperdrive... Then with an earth shattering thud, my mother stepped in and told me that there was no castles left, no palaces, no money, no art, no land and no "princely riches."
My naivety prompted me to ask, "So what is the point of the title?" To which she replied with a sentence that stuck with me my whole life and which was the genesis of this book:
"If you want to be a Prince in today's world, you have to be a Prince in your heart and in your actions."
24 years later, and one son in, I realized that my whole life had been spent attempting the impossible. I had been trying to learn about my family's history and behave as i thought it dictated, but at the same time, live like a normal boy, doing normal things, in a normal existence. It was impossible to marry the two stories... or so i thought.
For my eldest son's looming first birthday in 2011, I decided that rather than buying him a cuddly toy or a piece of jewelry to commemorate the occasion, I was going to give him something that could last forever. Love and knowledge.
So I started to write down a few "fatherly advice" style notes, asking myself, "How does one behave like a Prince in today’s world? What elements of this title can be adapted for use in our modern day setting? How can I translate these ideas mixing a touch of old world charm with modern day spirituality?"
These first few notes turned into a few more and so on and so on. Before I knew it, 3 days had passed and this small gesture had snowballed into 100 pages with 100 notes. The advice covered all areas of what I believed a "Prince's life" entailed: Courage, love, leadership, chivalry, honor, charity, spirituality, balance and romance to name but a few.
Intending the book to exist as just one copy on my son's bedside table, I asked my illustrator friend, Carlos Aponte, to draw a few pictures inside.
After reading 5 pages he said,"You need to publish this book Alexi. Children and adults alike need to read this, especially in today's world." Carlos and my wife spent the next 2 years pushing me to publish this extremely personal "love letter" to my son. So after 2 years and one more son, with extreme trepidation, I gently pushed it out into the world.
The book somehow connected with people and has now been published in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Polish and Dutch and most importantly, ALL THE PROFITS GO TO THE CHARITY CONCERN WORLDWIDE of which I am an ambassador. http://www.concernworldwide.org/
I hope you enjoy it :)
Thank you for reading this!
With love,
Alexi x
More info: amazon.com
