With their own sensitivity, artists present us with their vision of the world around us. This week, we give carte blanche to actress Éliane Gagnon.
Choose. THE. Happiness. These three words can disturb us deeply if we are in a less happy place in our life. They can also inspire us and remind us that we are responsible. Honestly, as an actress who loves drama, I’ve always found that happiness doesn’t sell that much. And as a woman who spent part of her life sabotaging it for obscure and half-explainable reasons, I was part of this group who claimed that happiness was in a class by itself… The privileged, perhaps?
Paradoxically, I am obsessed with happiness. Literally. The real quest for happiness or the quest for real happiness? Which one to choose ? The path that leads there, or the happiness that becomes the path, as Boris Cyrulnik beautifully puts it? In between, there is the reality of the drama we create daily.
Humans often tend to look for happiness like a needle in a haystack, sometimes forgetting that we need to stop looking for it and accept that it is volatile. He leaves. He returns. He’s going back. It is up to us to choose to keep it warm close to our hearts. Even to protect him.
It is possible that, like the needle, we will never find it because we are not looking in the right place. Or… that we constantly have our heads caught in the drama of our ego which gives us the false feeling of existing. The drama, the ego and, worse, the states of dependence that it generates distance us from what we obsessively seek, preventing us from tasting happiness in the present moment, leaving us with the bitter taste of the tune Where is happiness, by Christophe Maé. The song in itself is fine, but searching desperately… it’s exhausting!
And that… it’s the sad and banal story of humans (like me) who have not learned to love themselves or to manage their thoughts and emotions healthily. The logical consequence, although (too) often tragic, is the behavioral, personality and perception disorders that lead us to think what? That happiness is found outside, that a relationship, sex, money, job, success, title or substance should make us happy, allow us to flourish and be well, Finally. If we’re lucky, it’ll last five minutes!
“Addicts” is the name we were given. Personally, I prefer “instant-gratification-addicts-who-want-to-do-everything-to-have-it-again-and-again.” ” Brief. It’s a perspective. This loaded word describes a condition, but should not be used as much. No more than stigmatizing words like “addict”, “alcoholic”, “junkie”, “drug addict”. Not because it doesn’t exist or because I deny that it has meaning, but rather because addiction is so much more complex than a label.
What if we instead started from the principle that we all need to learn to love ourselves, to recover our true nature damaged in the maze of demands, expectations, performance anxiety, collective trauma and societal excesses? What if we agreed that we all need to recover from the deleterious effects of a dysfunctional society? What if we admitted that all humans are likely to cross the threshold of dependence only to find themselves on the verge of trouble in this incessant quest for happiness?
Imagine if, collectively, we dropped the barriers of social, ethnic, cultural or sexual classes and tried to understand each other for real, without the judgment to which we are conditioned?
“Dependent” or not, we all have a path of happiness to share, strewn with trials and resilience; we can all recognize ourselves in our thoughts, our fears, our behaviors, our obsessions and our ways of seeing life.
If we had our hearts open to the story of Marie, Émilie, Patrick, Mariana, Jo, Hugo… and all the humans we meet every day, without knowing anything about the battle that ‘they led. Let them still lead. What kind of world would we live in, if we gave ourselves this chance?
What if happiness was a series of moments where we choose to consider humans for what they are, rather than what they do, don’t do or couldn’t do in the past?
One day, someone happy told me about his happiness and how he found it, proud of having decided the path, not imposed or dictated by anyone or anything. It wasn’t in a box of Cracker Jack or in a haystack, nor in a bottle of Grand Marnier… It was just one moment. To tell his story. A moment that changed the course of my destiny at the time, chaotic, into a softer, brighter one.
Happiness perhaps doesn’t sell. But it pays off in a curse, the moment that makes the difference in someone else’s life. This precious moment that traces the path to the future for the one who walks in the dark of his own sabotage, isolated and unhappy… until today.
Happy. Joyful. Free to choose. Happiness.
It saves lives, telling it. I will continue. As long as I have this privilege.
Who is Éliane Gagnon?
Born in Montreal in 1985, Éliane Gagnon is an actress.
We saw her on television in Ramdamfrom 2004, then in shows like RAMs Or Feminine/feminine.
In the cinema, she played roles notably in Louis Cyr And Jo for Jonathan.
In 2019, she published the biographical novel Escape notebooksin which she notably addresses her addiction issues and her journey to sobriety.
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