I offer you the best wish received at the dawn of a new year, an old memory on a piece of paper that I have cherished for 12 years. During an evening of poetry, between two amateurs covering the poor microphone with their postilions loaded with metaphors, the host invited everyone to write a wish on a piece of paper, then to get up to go and offer it to a stranger. ; it seems distant to us, but it did exist, that crazy time when we spat into microphones, when we walked in bars and we went to shake hands with strangers, or even more so. So, with the holiday magic running through the arteries, the inspired audience threw themselves on the pencils and Post-its.
I presume that I wrote a piece of a poem, or an aphorism intended to be loaded with wit and good taste. I no longer remember to whom I offered the fruit of my meager genius. However, I still remember the tired face of this tall guy who came to me. I often met him in the city center, sometimes accompanied by street workers. Barely broken, the discreet marginality, the look a little elusive and sad, but the sincere smile.
I wish you all the best that you think of me.
He did not go to the microphone, did not recite any agreed poem on the revolutions to be made. I am the only one privileged to know the work conceived that evening, but I remain convinced that in one single sentence he produced more poetry than all the poets put together.
I wish you all the best that you think of me. This wish is a magnificent call to otherness, to the consideration of the other without falling into submission or cutesy benevolence. In other words: I don’t know if you are capable of empathy, but what you see beautiful in me, I hope for you.
This piece of paper moved with me. I dragged it in my wallet for a few years; even broken, I was rich. Right now it’s pinned to my bulletin board, right above my head. More relevant than ever, I want to shout it out in the face of the world, to its tried heart too. And to you.
Whether we share the same ideals, the same struggles, or compete for ideas, I wish you a Happy New Year.
Whether you are already flashing the photos of your third vaccine on social networks or whether you spend your evenings collecting information to feed your antivax argument, I wish you a Happy New Year.
Whether you organize anti-capitalist or environmentalist demonstrations on ultracapitalist platforms with your phone not only assembled by Bengalis, but containing rare African minerals, or that you are cheating me with abusive phone plans with dubious sales techniques for the sole purpose of t ‘enrich at my expense, I wish you a happy new year.
Whether you are an emerging artist trying to emerge when access to theaters is restricted or you are a show broadcaster who pedal to keep your employees and prepare a hypothetical program full of established stars who will crush the last hopes of the aforementioned emerging artist, I wish you a happy new year.
Whether you embrace and celebrate your contradictions by humbly trying to improve yourself or you boast your morale by giving lessons, perched on convoluted concepts, I wish you a Happy New Year.
It will probably be hard and long for most of us, but we can still beautify ourselves. If only by wishing the other the best of oneself, because oneself is a bit like the other.
Slight differences between our DNAs distinguish us from the chimpanzee, less than 1% of our genomes are different. If our deoxyribonucleic acid is so close to the great ape, imagine how similar it is to our neighbors, mechanics, nurses, and scoundrels. Whether they are women, trans, men, non-binary, black, white, Asians or karaoke lovers. We fight over everything, especially over the details, and even if we sometimes struggle to get together, we look alike.
The pandemic sickens and wears us all out. Let us keep in mind our common human condition, our shaken times and all that could bind us when the time comes to fight, to judge us, to condemn us and to divide us. The world is beautiful, but ramshackle, his face is tired, and the message he gives us is more of an ultimatum than a poem …
Climatic, geopolitical and health upheavals are hovering over our heads. Let us spare our relations and save our strength for the next essential solidarities; there will be no shortage of struggles to be waged together in the years to come. In the meantime, I wish myself all the best that I think of you.