In his first attempt, life is not a race (2019), comedian Léa Stréliski called on readers to slow down, to turn away from the anxiety-inducing demands of performance and success that shape our lives and our societies, to better reconnect with the essentials. But what, exactly, is the main thing? What is beyond this race that dictates our actions, our ambitions, our relationships with others and with the world?
The answer is at the heart of his second book, The recipe for love, in which she undertakes a reflection on the quest for love, but above all on the quest for oneself, one’s true desires, one’s true essence. All with a good dose of tenderness, humor and self-mockery.
This is the title that struck me first. To apply vacuum salesman language to something as fundamental as love is completely ridiculous, but it makes me laugh.
“It’s the title that came to me first,” she recalls, seated at a café in the Plateau Mont-Royal. To apply vacuum salesman language to something as fundamental as love is completely ridiculous, but it makes me laugh. In love as in life, as soon as you think you have understood something, something happens to you that takes you completely elsewhere. But I have a sideself-help” very present. So I wanted to start from my experience and my romantic relationship — which I consider rather successful — to offer advice and reflections. »
The comedian is aware of approaching this extremely complex subject from a privileged position. “To ask this kind of question, you have to have passed the stage of survival. You have to have a roof, food, time, which a small percentage of humans on Earth have. So I try to be as down to earth as possible. »
A complicated cake
According to Léa Stréliski, the recipe for true love requires very few ingredients. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean it’s easy to do. “The recipe is simple, but the cake is complicated. It comes with a lot of work. »
As flour, an essential element, she cites intimacy, a relationship that one must first build with oneself, before being able to dream of forging solid ties with others. “The key is self-knowledge. Try not to lie to yourself, to live in line with what you are and what you want, even if it scares us. It’s much easier to wear a mask, to maintain an unrealistic image on social networks, than to present your truth to the world. It’s a fold that we take from childhood, to obtain affection from our parents, to respond to the image they have of us. However, it is impossible to build authentic links when we lie to ourselves, since no one can know us, let alone satisfy us. »
To let this truth express itself, to put it at the service of your personal evolution and that of your couple, you must also be able to get angry; a feeling to which women have little access since it is repressed, repressed and singled out from early childhood. “Women, we are rather brought up to be pretty, polite, helpful. It was so internalized in me that I didn’t understand when my shrink spoke to me about healthy anger. »
Healthy anger, far from falling into violence and destruction, would rather be fruitful, a source of progress, peace, equality, introspection and protection. “After years of work, I understood that healthy anger is that which protects what is fragile. This learning is all the more important in the era of social networks, where we tend to all stay at the same address and believe that all opinions are equal. I don’t agree with that at all. There are things in life that will die if we don’t protect them: children who have no voice, who get beaten up on their way to school, who are sent to the front; democracy ; The poors ; the minorities. »
In the couple, this ability to get angry and to “put one’s foot down” is essential for both parties to fulfill themselves, to grow, to be true to themselves, to achieve a certain form of equity. “My husband doesn’t feel threatened by my speaking out, my public visibility, my dream of being on stage. My ex felt it was affecting his manhood. It is certain that this relationship was doomed to failure. Our significant other needs to be able to hear what is important to us, that the foundations of our being not be trampled, that that person carries that love with our lives. »
Call for intimacy
Because we carry with us the wounds of the past, that we have been hurt, afraid, experienced grief, it is normal to welcome love into our lives with an arm’s length distance, to protect ourselves from possible suffering. . “My husband lost his girlfriend in a car accident when he was 20 years old. He experienced the unimaginable. He could have remained stuck in his darkness and his demons. But he made the choice to transform this love into something greater, and above all, to allow himself to love again. Love takes courage. He often tells me that when people die, all we have left is the certainty that we loved them as best we could. »
One of the problems of our time, according to Léa Stréliski, is our tendency to confuse love with admiration. “The ego is a trap. We mistakenly think that love is counted in likes. She dreams that our obsession with results, performance and recognition will give way to a society that defends fragility, love and respect for souls.
“My book is a call to intimacy, which for me is the opposite of the ego. I would like it to be cultivated, conserved, studied and taught from primary school. I would like it to be seen everywhere in our cities, our neighborhoods. Let them be thought of to preserve joy, beauty, poetry, harmony and love. »