Like a thirst for sweetness

“Sweetness is an enigma. »

This is the first sentence of Power of gentlenessan essay by Anne Dufourmantelle.

The French psychoanalyst and philosopher published it almost ten years ago, but if you want my opinion, it is good to read it again today, when we are regularly invited to numb the weight of the world with self care and kindness…

What exactly is this famous sweetness that we are prescribed like a miracle cure? The question arises, right?

For the philosopher who died tragically in 2017, gentleness is both intelligence, ethics, calm and supreme power.

“It is the name of an emotion whose name we have lost, coming from a time when humanity was not dissociated from the elements, animals, light, spirits. »

And if it were a gesture, “it would be a caress”.

Nothing to do with our laundry soap, disposable razors or the advice of the life coach who wants us to manifest our dreams, so… However, all this is offered to us with the promise of a new softness.

And it sells, this great idea!

“Attacking softness is an unnamed crime that our era often commits in the name of its divinities: efficiency, speed, profitability […] It is made into an adulterated drug which they want to inculcate in us the need. »

However, according to Anne Dufourmantelle, it is impossible to possess softness. We can only welcome the visit.

These days, on my side, I catch a glimpse of it every other morning. Every time my 75-year-old neighbor walks around singing, actually.

Louis Rousseau walks about ten kilometers a day, singing songs by Piaf, Cohen, Aznavour, Vigneault, Leclerc… “That’s all I have left to do, try to sow joy and love in neighborhood,” he told me last week.

Afterwards, he confided to me that he dreamed of founding a troop of troubadours. Notice to interested parties.

Otherwise, when the sweetness forgets to visit me, I can always find it on Manal Drissi’s Facebook page.

In 2018, the columnist created what she calls a “potluck of sweets” for the first time. In short, she invited people to comment on a status (“Balance your sweet!”) by indicating what they had experienced, learned or read happy, in the last days.

“I thought Facebook was very negative,” explained Manal Drissi to me. I wanted to create a place where you could drop positives, but I didn’t expect people to be so attached to it, to be told about it on the street and asked when the next one would be. “Swing your sweet”!”

And what did she mean, exactly, by calling for gentleness?

At the end of the line, Manal thinks. “I wasn’t trying so much to define what was soft as to contrast what wasn’t. Sweetness is most easily defined by its opposite, but in the end, it’s what makes us feel good. »

Thereupon, she joins Anne Dufourmantelle, for whom softness and its light are often revealed in the shadows. They answer each other.

Four years later, Manal’s project continues. Among what the people who “swing their sweet” present, many photos of pets, notes the columnist.

In this regard, Anne Dufourmantelle can once again enlighten us: “If the gentleness of the animal touches us in this way, it is undoubtedly because it comes to us from a being which coincides with itself almost entirely”, she writes in Power of gentleness.

(It’s true that my cat is disarmingly authentic.)

lovers of potluck de Manal also confide in about their studies, their work or even events which, a priori, have nothing sweet about them…

“I lost a loved one, but it allowed me to reconnect with members of my family” or even “I have been sober for six months”, cites the columnist as an example.

According to her, it is a real solidarity that unfolds between foreigners.

“We underestimate how good it does people to see other people happy. At the same time, it calls for introspection. We can ask ourselves what we experienced that was positive… And perhaps even realize that we didn’t experience anything sweet. We miss that. »

Moreover, it often happens that Internet users respond that the sweetest thing they have experienced in their day is reading the comments left by others. This is what makes Manal Drissi believe that sweetness multiplies without being lost. Let her clone herself!

Which brings us back to softness as an economic argument: “We capitalize on the idea of ​​individual softness, but it comes down to a community affair, believes the columnist. What people rarely share is “I bought myself a new boat”! We are more in human contact, in living beings who do us good. is not individual or material, ultimately.

Sweetness would rather be a reminder that we are not alone. That we may even be seen.

Basically, as Anne Dufourmantelle writes: “It is not always pleasant to live. But the feeling of existing calls for gentleness. »