Tag: philosophy

Choosing one path is always not choosing all the others, and that is what makes it special. Choosing, then, is choosing and giving up, and sustaining it involves both valuing the path chosen and accepting the distance from those not chosen. Many people cannot bear it, just as they cannot bear the fact that to live is to choose. However, whether one likes it or not, giving up a choice is also a choice, and one ultimately reaps the rewards of this decision.

It is change that dynamizes life and, precisely when it is most unwanted, demonstrates its greatest potential. The desire for stability, which is very natural, is also to a large extent the desire for comfort. However, since this is unproductive, so is the intransigent resistance to change. It is true that sometimes change is forced upon us, and it does not come without tears and pain; but we have to assimilate it, we have to grow by assimilating it, and end with a smile of acceptance.

Lavelle is right when he says that “de toutes les vertus de l’âme, la douceur est la plus subtile et la plus rare”. Gentleness, when seen, disarms, and when practiced, does an indescribable amount of good. And because it is as rare as it is, it is very easy for man to forget it, and very natural not to practice it. And even if, in one shot, he is enlightened by it, he will have to work hard to remember this experience which, like all the others, time tries to dissipate. But he must make the effort, he must remember every day how this fine virtue, sometimes manifested by a word, a gesture or a look, is the most effective way to bring out a good feeling.

It takes a few gray hairs in the head to be continually amazed by the ineffable confluence of factors that contribute to the defining moments of a life. When we analyze, for example, the cathartic experiences that are so striking in Dostoevsky’s work, we realize that, although they are described with the utmost skill, although they strongly convey an idea of the complexity that surrounds them, it is impossible for the writer to exhaust them, it is impossible for him to simply describe them completely. Because they appear as points where the whole individual converges, his mind and his biography, his acts and his omissions. And if there is trauma, if there is liberation, if there is rebirth, they all appear concentrated, inseparable, as one single thing.