The measure of my age, of my inescapable distance from all these realities which, it seems to me, were still in the palm of my palm so little time ago, I take it regularly. I rediscover it tirelessly with, each time, something of the original astonishment, as if this reality, not tolerating the light for too long, would hasten to escape me as soon as I found it.
Like a sudden wind blowing over my busy days, more or less gently depositing me where I really am in the timeline—somewhere “in the middle” in its optimistic version, “more towards the end” in its dark perspective. I constantly rediscover this state that the psychoanalyst Robert Stolorow designates as “being-stretched-towards-death” (being-toward-death).
Contrary to the prevailing discourse that continually invites us to spin on the highway of happiness, pleasures and exploits, I regularly sit within myself, motionless, contemplating everything that escapes me, everything that I about to lose everything that has already fled.
For those who would be worried, know that I feel joy in a way that is as regular, fully, connected as I am also to my favorite gods and goddesses of Olympus: Aphrodite and Dionysos. I have always liked this Jungian vision of a “polytheistic psyche”, in which we would be called to order by symptoms or chances which are perhaps not, as soon as we stopped honoring parts of us who claim their due in our lives.
Maturity, in this view of things, would mean accepting to live with growing inner complexity, with one thing and its opposite within us, in an awareness of our tensions, our ambivalences, much more than overhead, in domination or control of our stakes. We are very far, here, from the definition given by the World Health Organization on what would be mental health as this “state of well-being allowing to achieve, to overcome the normal tensions of life and to contribute to the life of his community.
I really wonder to what extent this definition is not in itself completely enshrined in Western values which themselves generate so much of our psychological suffering, with these keywords which are: permanence, normality, self-actualization, overcoming and contribution.
One would be tempted to talk to me about Buddhism, about impermanence and
live-in-the-moment, and I would be tempted to listen, as long as the original concepts are not stripped of their raw materials, plated next to a set of values in all respects divergent from the entire spiritual framework from which they are too often extracted in the West.
The last time I was seized with my state of “tight-toward-death” was during the mini-colloquium organized by the students of the One Health committee – another WHO concept, that of much more interesting, in my opinion, than the definition of mental health — from the University of Montreal. The committee, made up mainly of students from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, had invited experts from various fields related to human, animal and environmental health to reflect on a concerted future that “would take care of the living”, as it was so nicely called. Pascale Lehoux, full professor in the Department of Management, Evaluation and Policy of the School of Public Health of the University of Montreal during the opening panel.
In an icebreaker activity, we had to answer the famous question: “What would you bring to a desert island?” My difference became full before my eyes, when nothing mattered to me to bring to this island, not even my greatest musical or literary classics, nor even what would ensure my survival. In an assumed banality, the only image that imposed itself was that of a photo of loved faces; lovers, children, friends, family. A student, inhabited by her youth like a second skin, asked me if it was not “to turn the iron in the wound”, whereas, for me, it was obvious that my life would be only wound without them.
I realized again that I defined myself more and more by my deep connections; less and less by other objects, however significant they may be. The words of Christiane Singer: “I swear to you. When there is nothing, there is only love. seemed so right to me then.
Nevertheless, since the activity, I keep thinking about these talismans and “other white pebbles” – thus named by Rafaële Germain and Dominique Fortier in the very beautiful For memory — that we would have to take when it comes to returning to this place on the desert island. This image, that of the island, one might think, is in fact only a reminder of this existential solitude which accompanies the awareness of our finitude.
There are, yes, a few meaningful objects that I would take to keep my heart warm, to bring me home, to keep me on the side of the living, or to accept death as invited.
But, instead of spreading mine out to you, I stop and listen to you.
As the winter that is preparing can take, for many, the form of this trip, desired or not, towards a more conscious interiority of the island that we all inhabit, it seems wise to me to reverberate the question towards you in the November sequel. .