L'amour

(Ecrit lors de l'atelier d'écriture en juillet 2019)

L’amour…

Qu’est-ce que c’est l’amour? Le vrai?

… C’est le cœur qui se réveille au printemps après le gros sommeil de l’hiver

… C’est une grosse bouffée d’oxygène, après des relations compliquées et étouffantes

… C’est le respect, la confiance et la générosité

… C’est le sourire au petit matin et un rire fou le soir

… C’est le câlin et le parfum laissé sur l’oreiller

… Ce sont les mots qui se croisent, sans prises de tête inutiles

… C’est le “oui” et le “non”, toujours dans la bonne humeur

… C’est le chocolat au lait - la meilleure drogue dont on ne peut pas se passer

… Ce sont les yeux qui pétillent quand on prononce son prénom

… C’est un coin de paradis, l’endroit le plus beau du monde

(Un)Human Relations

(Text originally written in August 2018)

I am sure you will agree with me when I say that we live in the times where we are constantly over-connected digitally and under-connected in our most important relationships. The human relationships. Or at least the ones which are considered human by default. 

The other day I was having lunch alone in a restaurant and I did what I enjoy doing most in these situations: I watched the people sitting at the other tables. What a great spot to observe the humanity! And what a great opportunity to realize that we can easily become the technology slaves... There was a couple at a table in front of me who did something which simply astonished me. I was like: Whaaaat?! Once the waiter brought their big platter with the seafood (it looked pretty amazing though!), they both stood up and each of them made a picture of it with their own phone. I almost fell off my chair, asking myself: why the heck couldn’t they make this photo with just one phone and then send it to each other? I mean, that’s what I would do. I tend to keep my phone away in my bag when I am having a meal with somebody, and I am not crazy about “food porn” either, so I would let the other person do the pic if she really wants to. Well, unless I am on holidays with my best friend and I am the one responsible for capturing all the moments we spend together. That would be different, right?

There were not many people at the restaurant that day, but I did notice another behavior, this one not involving technology though. There was one couple, in their fifties I guess, who would barely talk to each other during the whole meal. At some point I thought: thank God they are there to eat and can at least exchange a bit about each course they are both having. Because, honestly, each time they were waiting for the waiter to bring the food, there was a complete silence at their table. Personally I found that scary! I remember texting a friend, explaining the whole situation, and saying that I would not like to end up my in a couple life like this. I had already known that my future life partner would have to be somebody with whom I would never get bored and could spend hours just talking, but that lunch was a striking confirmation: I DEFINITELY don’t want that kind of life for myself!

Friendship

(Text originally written in summer 2018)

One day I noted in my notebook: “The world has quite the magical way of placing the most random, yet necessary, people in our lives”. I call those people Friends, with big F. 

Friendships come to our lives holding many faces, many ages and many circumstances. We make friends at school and later on at work. Childhood friendships can stick with us till our adult life or they can slowly disappear with time, giving space to the new ones. Friends of our friends can become our friends as well. Sometimes we can be surprised with somebody turning into our “people” when we least expect it from her. And many times, those are the most precious ones…

My first best friend was my Mom. And she actually still is. When I was young, my girlfriends at the time used to get very surprised when I was saying how close I am with my Mom. They would find it odd that I was able to share with her basically everything. So sometimes I would even prefer not to reveal that, cause I didn’t want to be mocked. My girlfriends of today, who are responsible and adult women, tend to be even a little jealous about my so close relationship with the one who gave me life, the greatest gift of all times. My friends today say it is really rare to be able to be so sincere with your Mother, as they themselves never had this kind of relationship with theirs. Those are the moments which make me proud, and I am sure my Mom is proud as well of what she has managed to build with me through all those years, especially that our mother-daughter bond is not exactly the same as she had with her own mother, to say it least.

But my Mom is not only the one who knows everything about my life, every little secret, every love story, every break-up (which, I must say, always breaks her heart a bit as well), every success and every failure. She is also the first one I call when something cheerful happens to me, and the first one to hear me crying when I feel sad. She is the one giving me a piece of advice whenever I need it, and I am always astonished at how right she usually is. The eternal power of a mother I suppose? Sometimes we call each other just to say hello, to wish each other “a nice day”, and sometimes just to say “I love you” - words she taught me to say without fear, but with confidence, and always from the bottom of my heart. Each year, for my birthday, she calls me at exactly 11 a.m., that is the hour I was born on a cold winter Friday in January 1984. Each year as well, she calls me on my name’s day in July, and on the Children’s Day in June. Those are our little mommy-and-her-girl routines, but they truly bring joy and make those days special and unforgettable…

So, what is it exactly that makes two people Friends with big F?

Well, the first important ingredient is time. Real  friendship doesn’t happen overnight. It requires months, sometimes years, of hard work, good care, patience and passion. And those need to remain constant, otherwise it is very easy to lose a friend, and that loss can actually happen overnight. 

For the true bonding to happen, there must be trust, honesty, full attention, and a little bit of fun and affection too. It requires being there for your person when she needs it, whether it is to laugh or to cry. It also means being there when your friend does not ask for you, but the strong connection you have gives you the ability to feel when your presence would be mostly appreciated, you just know when you need to get in that car or jump on that subway and listen to her story, hold her hand when she cries, and hold your belly when you both laugh like crazy. Yes my friend, that is what it really takes…

Life goes on and we evolve with the passing time. Those who were still our friends a few years ago - might not be them anymore today. And this is completely normal. Before you used to ride the same train, in the same direction and in the same pace. Then at some point some of your friends got out at one of the stations, and you continued the journey. You might have also got out in the same time as they did, but just to change the train and continue the ride in a different direction. Those few precious ones stayed in touch, sporadically or on a more regular basis. But still, you can feel your relationship is not the same as it used to be. Times change, and people change too. And there is nothing you can do about it. What you can do though is hold on tight to the Friends you have right now, as they are surely not going anywhere for at least a little while... 

Relationships

(Text originally written in Spring 2018)

Human relationships are like chemical compounds: some people, just like chemical elements, go well together, and some - don’t. Just like hydrogen, when linked to oxygen, can turn into water, which is the source of life, a man and a woman, when living in harmony, they can create a new human being. Magic? Maybe just a little bit. But it’s mostly the mother nature who decided the things to be this way. And in the same time, that same nature allows that when you link certain elements together - they can constitute a dangerous compound, a chemical bomb, a killing weapon. It’s not magic anymore, it’s reality.

It is basically impossible to go through life alone. It is inevitable to be dependent on somebody or have somebody depend on us at some point or the other. The world is not a bunch of closed boxes, one box for one person, completely disconnected, with no attachment whatsoever. The environment we live in is a web of complex interconnections, where two people meet, connect, stay together and then separate. And this happens every minute of every day, at every corner of the street in every city in the world. 

The first relationship we ever experience in life is with our parents. They are our first friends, first teachers, first role-models. Or maybe not. Unfortunately, not everybody is lucky to be born into a loving family, where husband and wife respect each other. Maybe your father was an alcoholic and your mother was never there, staying late in the office just to avoid the burden of her wife and mother duties. But still, having experienced that kind of childhood, at least we know what family model we do not want to replicate in our future adult life. We learn the lesson the hard way, but at least we learn it. 

Then we go to school, and to a university. We make friends, but we also make our first enemies, we learn what it is to collaborate and to compete with each other. We meet our first sweetheart, then the second one, and another, and another one… We keep seeking that one true love until we finally find it. Or we don’t. We might also give up at some point and tell ourselves: the best things in life are the ones you don’t actually look for, but they will surely come when the time is right. And believe me, sooner or later, they do come and hit you by surprise, and then there is no way back. Because actually you do not want to go back where you were anymore.

The moment you enter the workforce, the real-life roller-coaster becomes your daily routine. Whatever you learned back at school about people and relationships, has now grown in power. You are careful in choosing your allies and giving trust, you put filters around you so that nobody comes to harm you. First you are lucky to have a manager who will lead you and make you grow, and then you get a boss who lacks self-confidence and spills all her frustrations on you. And then you thrive and become a leader yourself. A good leader. One that people want to follow and want to learn from. 

Life is a journey… Once we embark on it, we may never know how long it will last. We only know we would like it to continue as long as possible. And at each stage of that journey we get linked to other people. All those relationships shape us, define us, they make us - us. Every person we meet has something to offer, she is there for a reason, and we should accept that gift, whether it is good or bad...

I'm back!

Two years ago I shut down my blog. I simply had to. For reasons which I prefer to keep for myself.

Today I am happy to say that those reasons are no longer valid. What happened in the past, let’s keep it where it belongs - in the past. I am now ready to go back to my writing. To share with you again my thoughts, my experiences, my observations, my joys and my challenges.

The company I work for have recently made my portrait: to present me as their employee, what are exactly my job responsibilities, but also to present me as a person, who I really am, what I like doing outside my working hours. And it is then that I mentioned that I’ve been writing since I was 11 years old. And it made me realize that I haven’t done it for a while, that I let that great passion of mine hide somewhere at the bottom of a drawer. And that it would be probably high time to take it out.

I know that some of you have been missing my texts. But you can be sure that I’ve been missing them even more. Especially that I have a bunch of ideas to put on paper, ideas I’ve been noting down all this time, waiting for the best moment to get them out.

I have already a few texts prepared for you, and even, surprise surprise, a few poems as well. Because even though I was not writing on my blog, I did keep writing for the last two years, just for myself. And I will definitely share with you some of these pages. Maybe not all of them, because some of those texts are rather personal, and I wouldn’t like them to go public. But you will still be well served, no worries about that.

My blog has always been in English, and it will remain as such. But I do have a few texts in French, that I wrote at the “creative writing” workshop last summer, here in Paris, and I would be happy to share them with you, the French-speaking part of my audience.

And so to kick off my blog again, after two years of pause, I would like to propose to you the text in French on “Why I write?”.

Enjoy!

And… it’s really great to be back here!



* Pourquoi vous écrivez?

Mon métier ce sont les chiffres, mais ma passion ce sont les mots. Mon journal intime peut très bien le témoigner. Et ça fait vingt-quatre ans que ça dure. Vingt-quatre ans que je mets les mots sur le papier, ou sur l’écran de l’ordinateur, pour exprimer ce que je n’ose pas dire à haute voix, pour me libérer, pour exprimer ma gratitude pour la journée qui vient de s’écouler.

Et puis, quand j’arrive à retrouver des moments calmes, moments de solitude, de déconnexion complète, j’écris ce que je pense, ce que j’observe autour de moi, ce que je vis au quotidien, ce que j’ai envie de partager. Mes amis me disent que j’ai une plume facile, que ça se lit bien, surtout en anglais, et que mes petits textes leur manquent. En fait, ils me manquent à moi aussi. Me suis-je perdue un peu? Ne serait-il pas temps de dépoussiérer ces notes, dûment sauvegardées dans de petits cahiers, et leur donner enfin une vie?!