“This too shall pass,” I used to say to myself every morning almost ten years ago. I was having a hard time both personally and professionally. I felt that although I was trying hard, I was getting little results, I was only meeting people with integrity in doses too small for my need for fairness. It seemed like everything was disappointing.
At that time I was accepted to study at Insead. I was very happy; I had to be there often, for a week at a time, I had a lot of homework, I had to learn, to apply, to do research. For three years, all this added extra stress to every day and made it hard to cope. I felt like the god Atlas with the earth on my shoulders. Of course it wasn’t that bad, but that’s how I felt in those years.
I don’t know why I was speaking English in my head, I am not an Anglophile, but a Francophile. Maybe French is for special situations, in a positive sense, as everything about France is for me. I know, I’m subjective, but I prefer to stay that way when it comes to anything related to France.
But then it was hard for me. So hard that for three years I called the rescue every month. Anyway, they all passed, with difficulty, with the feeling that bits of me were scattered in all directions, but they passed.
This “this too shall pass” applies to the good times, though. When I finished my studies at Insead, I was extremely happy when I received a very good evaluation of my executive master thesis. So happy that I wanted everyone around me to know, to show them how much joy I could exude, I wished the day would never end.
There have been many other moments of immense joy over the years. It’s those moments when, like children, you don’t want to go to sleep, for fear that if you’ve been touched by the spell of a good fairy that day, sleep will break it and you’ll fall into the void, find yourself like Cinderella after midnight.
Something of the child spirit still lives in me: every time I have one of these really good moments, I pull at each day like I pull at chewing gum, hoping it will stretch forever. Sleep wins out, though, and the next day the joy is still there, but of a different kind, more settled, more mature, more controlled, so as to leave room for other events, not to take up too much space, not to inconvenience anyone.
And so, little by little, it screens itself, the memory of joy remains, which I put in a personal showcase of golden, bright memories, which, alongside the dark ones, make up who I am.
