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Chekhov, Fellini and Sisyphus’ lesson : “Slide, mortals, don’t bear down”

Our need of consolation and comfort is huge, but you know, we all have to stand up and go on living. The Sisyphus myth is a great one to help us :

He was punished by gods by being forced to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only to watch it come back to hit him, repeating this action for eternity. Camus, the French philosopher, wrote an entire book about this, as a metaphor of the absurdity of human life, but he wrote also :

“one must imagine Sisyphus happy”

There’s another sentence I like, in French it’s : “Glissez mortels, n’appuyez pas” – “Slide, mortals, don’t bear down”. It’s maybe a way to say “Don’t be so serious”, but also “Taste life as it comes”, or maybe “Smile, whatever happens”, and also “Dance with what you get (the ice), and stop WANTING this or that”. Slide means also : light and fast. Casual ? Oh, you knoooowww, I’m French, so I fancy to add this one too 🙂

It’s so short and great :

“Slide, mortals, don’t bear down”

In Fellini’s movies, it’s the way Mastroianni wanders into life and interact with people. Elegant, but casual too. In Chekhov, it’s a way of saying without really saying “we all fail, that’s life, we do what we can”, maybe we should have, but we did not. In Tennessee William’s work, it’s in the style and the way he constructs stories : he DARES, he’s cool, he’s almost dangerous. I found it also in the way you can examine some complex Art pieces, from opera to modern music : if you’re too serious, you’re bored. Have a drink, smile and maybe add a little frenchiness to it. Slide, mortals, don’t bear down…

Tool : Find yours. It’s an elegant way to be there without being there really. A casualness, a lightness, a way to smile, a way to dare, also, a way to say “no” to be totally serious. This is not THAT important…

In a way, Sisyphus tells many things : smile, breathe, dance, adapt, be flexible, listen, stand up, be a dolphin. And get up and push and roll your rock up. Move forward too.

Sorry for my English, good people. If you find strong mistakes, just let me know, OK ?

Labels on Humans’ Multiplicity

When we meet someone, our brain try to find out “who” is this person. It’s maybe your new hairdresser, a new doctor you have to see, your future lover or a new colleague : you meet this human being and you immediatly begin to watch and analyse his or her personality.

Then, like a puzzle, you collect “words on stickers” you put on this person. Slow, shy, funny, anxious or whatever. Just take the sitcom Friends : Don’t you have words to stick to Monica, Joey or Phoebe ? See ?

This is OK and this is the way we all do. Monica is perfectionnist, competitive and obsessive-compulsive, Joey is… ahh you know all that, right ?

What stickers do you put on your… friends ? People have many facets. You discover them one by one… Flaws and Qualities, we are all a mess and a multiplicity. There’s a whole family in here ! Therefore, there’s an interesting set of dials to watch here. And some questions :

• Can we be wrong when we put some stickers on someone ?
• What happens when you watch someone drunk ? Or in danger ? Are the stickers useful then ? Are you able to remove them to find back your friend ?
• What do you do when you realize someone’s in disguise ? Wears masks ?
• Can someone hide some of dark personality traits ?
• Surprises ? What if the stickers you chose for a person were wrong ?…
• What about the stickers you “think” people put on you ?

About our dark sides, you can just click on this wiki : Shadow .

Dial : We all have good and bad personality traits. We have to fight our flaws, constantly, we make mistakes, we do what we can. You have to think about this when you put stickers on people you communicate with. Stickers are OK and funny to analyse a personality, but then, there’s a moment when you have to remove them and embrace contradictions and the complexity of us all… We are not made of words, but human beings…

You also have to watch closely people who list stickers on themselves. Maybe they’re right, maybe they hide something, maybe they… do what they can, too ! If your friend, one day, acts silly, it’s maybe the day to say : “Hey silly, what did you do ? Come here, I know you, and you’re not like that…”.

 

 

Reading the News… in old magazines

Diogenes Syndrome is a curse of course, a disease. Some people live like isolated monsters in accumulations of “things”, papers, books, whatever. I don’t live in domestic squalor and I don’t collect old candies wrappers, but I admit I keep too many things in the basement, including… boxes of old magazines.

From time to time I open one box and bring two dozens of old Pop-Rock, movies or news magazines at work. At lunch time, I read them. It provides me many little things :

• I eventually have small talks with people around me, surprised to see me reading  news from 2001. They think I’m a weirdo, and it’s a good feeling, I don’t know why.
• I get the satisfaction to realise that the “big pop groups” I disliked in the past vanished into oblivion. Bim. So there !
• I sometimes google some personalities to see how they are and what they do “now”, fifteen years after. It’s full of surprises, random changes, new roads, and disillusions…
• I save money : instead of buying a great new book at 24 Euros, I can find, eleven or fifteen years later, a pocket second hand one at 90 cents.
• Therefore, this makes me often think about what we all find “important” today…

Voilà ! Isn’t it a bliss, from time to time, to get under the surface of the “news” ?

Tool : Why couldn’t we use this “state of mind” for what we have now ? What if we imagine “What will this be in fifteen years” ? In entertainment, but also for our struggles and problems. Isn’t life short ? Is THIS (whatever it is) sooo important, really ?