In her columns, our collaborator Nathalie Plaat calls on your stories. In January, she asked you what you were expecting in 2023, without fuss, in the most literal sense of the word. The ‘News from you’ section provides an overview of your responses.
First of all, a few words about me to help you understand where I’m talking to you. I am a 34 year old woman, in a relationship for almost two and a half years. I am doing a doctorate in a very baroque human science called musicology, in addition to being a college lecturer and self-employed in the artistic community.
Like all my colleagues with a similar trajectory, I accumulate an absurd quantity of projects which, when they were presented to me (or when I invented them on my own as a grown-up), first aroused in me an access of enthusiasm ; this one almost always ends in a great moment of “but what I thought, Calvary”.
And yet, I persist, I persevere, because I have always been a performer. Performing well in studies, at work, in my relationships, on the large job market, dating in a time now gone, thank God, in my spare time — I still remember my shrink’s wide eyes when I told her, at 29, that I was starting to take ballet lessons on pointe: but why are you inflict that?
It will therefore be understood that stopping and doing nothing but receiving what life has to offer is not one of my regular hobbies. In all things I am PRO-ACTIVE, movements of cheerleading supporting. But I still try to cultivate a certain way of being that allows me, from time to time, to let go of this proactivity, this headlong rush.
If I stop and do nothing, what can I expect to receive? Such a beautiful question that leads, to my great surprise, to an answer that could not seem more silly: love. Admit that you too, it sounds cringe to your ears. Maybe because love is both elemental and terrifying. Elementary because it is the basis of our being-in-the-world, of the care given to us so that we can become. Terrifying because, as adults, we perceive it as too big to be true, as an absolute that only makes itself accessible to the most deserving.
It is the culmination of an Olympic caliber obstacle course, which we are moreover always threatened with having us kidnapped. Self-love after years of therapy, regular physical activity, mindfulness meditation, healthy and varied diet, waste-free consumption. Love for others after countless outings to cafes and bars, quality time, relational and sexual negotiations, mental and emotional burdens that are poorly distributed.
And yet. You don’t have to work hard to be liked. A phrase my therapist once said to me that still resonates so strongly that I make a point of repeating it to my friends every time they find themselves dating morons who call themselves “hard to love” (eyes roll inward). If I stop and do nothing, I can still count on the loving presence of my boyfriend, my friends, my family. If I don’t do anything, I’m still loved—and if I’m not loved, frankly, so be it (to be honest, I’d like to be as adamant in practice as in theory).
And for that matter, why not apply this possibility of free love on a collective scale? If I stop and do nothing, can I still expect the collective to be able to take care of me, just because I’m there? The spectacle of our public system falling apart is devastating: we are collapsing our collective capacity to take care of each other, in physical and mental health, in education, on the environmental level.
And yet, I still want to believe that our existence is precious enough that no one has to prove themselves, to demonstrate their worth and to prove that they are a citizen-taxpayer-worker-consumer capable enough to be pay attention. We’re here, and that’s all that should matter.