Take his life in his hands Why do some of us feel that we are witnessing the spectacle of their lives without participating in it, while others start and act with ease? Explanations to try to better influence our destiny.
Summary
When we investigate our articles, we sometimes call our witnesses at www.psychologies.com. It was formulated as follows: "You had the feeling of undergoing your existence. Tell how you have (re) become an actor in your life. Your e-mails were numerous!
Carla: "I am the flock, obediently. Bruno: "I had everything to be happy. But deep down, it sounded wrong. I decided to really listen to my desires. Laure: "So far, I have not chosen anything, I have not engaged in anything, I have no idea for the rest of the events. I wish my life would finally begin. "
Caroline: "I do not want to live with regrets" ...
Talks like these, the psychoanalyst Jacques Arènes, author, with Nathalie Sarthou-Lajus, of The Defeat of the Will (Seuil, 2005) often hears. "The other day," he says, "a young man told me:" It's as if I was in Roland Garros, but in the stands. " to be outside their existence, to have no hold on their destiny. The approach of the tens - 30, 40, 50 years ... - is conducive to this type of balance sheet. "The balance sheet is often used to avoid building the future," notes the psychoanalyst. The greater the number of non-actions, the more difficult the future becomes, and the more the choices are diminished. Then we must live now. "
Why are some incapable of grasping their existence by the arm of the body, while others radiate determination and freedom? "I would say that there is a quasi-biological fact, an initial vitality whose disparities are clearly felt in newborns," says Jacques Arènes. And then there is education and family ideology that push more or less toward self-realization. Corinne describes her childhood with a "patriarch father": "It was necessary to efface oneself for the benefit of men, not to have an opinion. I reproduced this behavior in my adult life ... "Bruno, from an environment where money was lacking, has buried his dreams to aim for material security:" No question of going to do the Fine Arts that " do not lead to anything ". So he made choices by default.
Prefer risk to comfort
Above all, Bruno had the right to remain silent, to fear to be deceived, to suffer, never to equal the grandeur of his dreams, many reasons why we may prefer the comfort of a morose existence to the risky adventure of a lifetime to invent. But the inertia that follows is painful. "I saw my lack of ambition as a quality," says Anne-Sophie, "whereas it is a terrible embarrassment not to be able to take part in social life. "
Tomas, the hero of Milan Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being (Gallimard, "Folio", 1989), curses himself for not being able to decide whether it is better to be with Tereza, the woman he has just met, or stay alone. Conscious of his indetermination, which he feels like cowardice, he understands it thus: "Man can never know what to want, for he has only one life and he can neither compare it to previous lives, or rectify it in later lives. This necessity of living at once, without repetition, renders him incapable of living.
Transforming the proofs
This is how "life flows day by day, and ... nothing. Neither surprise nor flavor "(Natalie), until the spell wakes us brutally. "My little boy has died and my whole life has been questioned," says Armelle. It took me this hard blow to realize that my life would now be what I would do. Julien was 28 years old when an accident left him disabled. "At that point, we better understand what it is all about. I could decide to live or die. And if I decided to live, it was necessary to do with that life. "