I wanted my life to be a success.
I didn't define what "succeeding in life" meant. It was obvious that it was a question of taking the "big steps" to "succeed": having a job, having an apartment, having a lover, and having children.
It was clear then, I had to have.
I never wanted to have a garden.
I'm in a garden at the time of writing these lines and I think it's strange, because I never wanted to have a garden. What I wanted was to visit these countries whose nature we pass through like huge gardens, these countries that we visit for the spacious and sumptuous nature. I wanted to go to those places where a part of me was vibrating with the idea of, maybe, never going back.
And then on my way home, I would rather fantasize about a red brick loft than a green garden.
Hearing church bells was the least of my worries.
I think about it because when I write his lines, the bells ring. Birds also sing. I didn't think of that before. The bells of a church and the cries of birds were for me very distant concerns that meant aging.
In the end, I thought aging meant dying. It's funny because old people have been living longer than me.
So before what I wanted to do, it was a success of my life.
Have a PEL. Create something that makes sense every day. Spend a lot of time and money discovering things and meeting people. The importance of the network I was told. Thanks to this I don't miss it... and it's amazing how much I miss silence.
It's funny because today I have a ton of people who are interested in what I do and I don't care what I do.
Today, I am in the garden, I hear the bells ringing, the birds singing and I realize that my PEL is useless to me.
I'm not 30 yet and I'm dancing in the middle of my contradictions.
I work in Paris. I live in Paris. I'm going out to Paris. And slowly, I realize that I don't really like my work, that my daily life is not exactly the idea I have of living and that I like to stay at home.
Shall we get out of here?
By leaving, I don't mean to leave. I intend to start. Starting from here, starting from this disturbing, disturbing and distressing observation. Start from here without fear of living to succeed.
What is disturbing is the increasingly pressing and oppressive consciousness that I have known for a long time. The resignations, travels, breaks and encounters were not insignificant, they were revealing.
I don't need to do, I need to learn. I don't like to keep busy, I like to get bored. I don't want to do much, I want to do just.
It's funny that I have to be so close to my old definition of "succeeding in life" to realize that I want to live it. More than anything.
And that I never needed more, I've always wanted less.
I recently discovered the texts of Valentin Vieira da Silva. I didn't know when I would decide to talk about it. Now, now.
Read it. Read it.
These texts encapsulate the simplest things. With each reading, I end up with a certain amount of what counts, a certain amount of what it means to live.
Now it's cold in the garden. My tea's getting cold. I walk into the house and he's there, playing guitar.
I then follow in my mind all the professional projects that I wanted to undertake and that I did not embrace. Despite my enthusiasm, I knew that at the end of it all, there would be nothing. At the end, we'll turn off. These projects are all a little alive today, I saw them carried by others, brilliantly successful by others. I don't know what life tells me. My ego sometimes panicked to see them exist without being able to appropriate them. And yet I feel it. I don't care about that. I'm done pretending to be more of a mind-master than a mind-master.
Art helps us cross over. So I'm here and I'm listening to his guitar notes.
And I'm a philosopher. I'm writing. I observe. I want to live like this.