What do Anna, Olivier, Elias, Fatou, Quina, Mélanie and Mouss have in common?
These people have what is called the vocation, the sacred fire. They have chosen exciting jobs, necessary for the proper functioning of society, demanding, but not all rewarding for the ego or the wallet.
Fatou is a beneficiary attendant, Elias teaches so-called “at risk” young people in a public school, Olivier is a firefighter, Anna a nurse, Quina a daycare technician and Mélanie is an emergency physician.
As for Mouss, he evolves in the confidential environment of so-called “alternative” artists and makes ends meet by serving comforting dishes in a restaurant on the South Shore, so as not to “trade off his freedom against small compromises and small arrangements with granting agencies”.
I forgot Rita, a retired civil servant who fills food baskets for struggling families and says she feels more useful and fulfilled today as a volunteer than in the government offices where she ended up being suffocated by existential anxieties.
These quiet heroes have something else in common. All were assailed by doubt, the urge to throw their illusions overboard, to withdraw to leave to others the care of healing the pains of the world.
Some broke down, paused and returned to the front lines after honing their defense mechanisms to learn how to engage without getting damaged.
Others have made a 180 degree turn, resumed their studies, changed direction and continued to feel useful elsewhere, without regret, without guilt, without cynicism and without practicing the politics of the scorched earth.
Those who have neither the choice nor the leisure to change their profession or survival strategy have gritted their teeth and cultivated their resilience, supported by loved ones who have arranged for them small spaces-times of physical and mental respite. .
The least surrounded have tried somehow not to sink and to find support services, in a fairly crowded network, whose staff themselves send distress signals.
“Have you ever been tempted to cry out to the public heart? »
The answer of my interlocutors is almost unanimous: the fear of being misunderstood, of awkwardly formulating their message and of choosing the unsuitable vehicle to transmit it. And above all the fear of not finding the right tone, the appropriate angle.
It is not given to all, in fact, to know how to step aside in front of the cause or the issue to which they want to draw attention.
Add to this the modesty that is essential when everything goes wrong and the risk of establishing a hierarchy between employment sectors: in the name of what principle would the artisans of culture take precedence over those of health, education or justice? Do their notoriety and the forums that are easily accessible to them make their situation more alarming and more worthy of interest?
Yet the health crisis was meant to serve as a lesson in humility to all of us who have had the privilege of working from home with no loss of pay or the ability to collect government benefits to survive without putting our safety at risk. . It will be remembered that the most depreciated trades were nevertheless the most essential and the most exposed!
When a sector of activity feels mistreated, cries of distress or publicly announced individual resignations sound at best like a sermon in the desert, at worst like a toga effect or emotional blackmail exerted by an ego in lack of attention. , who thus hopes to be begged not to leave the boat.
Who would want to see such suspicion weighed on him?
In addition, there are intermediary bodies whose role is to bring forward the demands and concerns of artists, health workers, education workers and other sectors. Nothing prevents individuals from denouncing the failings of their environment or from deploring the obstacles preventing them from doing their work in complete peace of mind, of course.
But there is a fine line between the solidarity rant, which exposes collective ills, and the solitary blues shot, which exhibits individual moods.
Indeed, when one is overwhelmed by a crisis of meaning and is going through a zone of identity turbulence, it is wiser to withdraw quietly and rebuild a life (with the help of loved ones and specialists) , even if it means coming back later to deliver a public testimony that could benefit people who are weakened by discouragement.
In these critical moments, the echo of our own disillusion is of no help to us; we need to hear from people who have been there and who have found paths to calm, bypasses or less winding roads to flourish while feeling useful to the community.
Take Rita, for example, our retired volunteer. After the pandemic, she nearly gave it all up and retired for good this time around. The families in need were more and more numerous and the baskets offered, less and less garnished.
She recognized this feeling of weariness faced with the magnitude of the task and the impotence of a system that turns on itself. The nausea resumed, like the year before his retirement.
After a few months, she meets an ex-volunteer companion who convinces her to return to service. His silent defection was nevertheless legitimate and understandable.
She is unable to explain why her footsteps have taken her back to the doors of the organization. Maybe she couldn’t bring herself to watch the world die?
Like those hundreds of volunteer firefighters who crossed borders to lend a hand to their Canadian colleagues and not watch the world burn?