Carte blanche to Rosalie Bonenfant | Collecting beauty

This week, we give carte blanche to Rosalie Bonenfant, who talks about how a sudden slump in our schedule can teach us to slow down… for the better.

This fall, I lost my job. Nothing alarming or that could make me say that I really know the peril of finding myself penniless, but for the first time in my life, I found myself with a horizon of blank pages in the diary. It's a precarious job, I was warned.

To say that the rug has been pulled out from under us would be an understatement. Rather, it seemed to me that an amateur magician tried unsuccessfully to perform the removed tablecloth trick without breaking any glass. Everything went to hell.

Like so many others on the project, I was thrown into the air with the cutlery and shattered into a thousand pieces. I took the fall to put together the puzzle that my job instability had made me. Quite a privilege to have the time to shape a new reality, I am aware.

Having no one in my charge, I was able to take advantage of the unfortunate circumstances to gently settle into my discomfort and observe what was unfolding within me while I suddenly found myself devoid of alarms and appointments.

First, available again to be appalled by the state of the entire world, I spent a lot of slow days, where nothing seemed to make sense anymore. The air seemed denser. I felt dizzy at the idea of ​​not contributing concretely to the collective. No doubt I was experiencing the first symptoms of withdrawal.

So I had no choice but to humbly learn to define myself outside of what I could do. I had to come to accept that so-called unproductive days were not necessarily wasted days. So, I converted my to-do list in a very gentle list with the firm intention of convincing myself that what I am is enough. Let me tell you that if I had known that it would prove to be such a perilous exercise, I would have taken up bolo instead!

“And what are you working on these days? »

This is the question I am systematically asked when people meet me.

” Nothing. I live. » No promise of a meeting or big secret project in the works. Just an existence, that is. I eat, I sleep, I make love, I laugh, I cry. In order and in disorder. What's more, sometimes I even start to believe that it's enough.

Where does this idea come from that my response is only acceptable if I accompany it with the feeling of shame that decorum imposes on passivity?

After all, the human experience is so absurd, what do we know about the real direction it should take? Maybe life doesn't go one way or the other. Who decreed that we must move forward to progress, are we not free to move in all directions? Above all, after how long of stagnation do we lose our status as active members of society?

How many of us convince ourselves that the pace suits us, when we are out of breath? When we walk in step, at the imposed pace, we barely notice that we are running towards a finish line that never stops being pushed back. The daily metronome is to adult life what the “beep beep” test is to teenagers; A esti nightmare!

I never had any rhythm. And if I understand less and less what we call a “life beat”, it’s probably because it doesn’t correspond to the measures of a daily life that I want to be decidedly more jazzy. Instinctively, I prefer to move randomly. At feeling. Or to the heady rhythm of my heartbeat, for Céline fans.

From a little further away, I hear more clearly that the clicking of the metronome that we are following is that of a capitalism that doesn't care about our limiting nature as human beings. The very one who wishes us alienated, too busy to stop and realize that life also exists outside the boundaries of a hectic 9 to 5.

As a good student, I am the first to be driven by a concern for a job well done. I like to deliver the goods, as they say. But as soon as I find myself outside the work environment, the desire for productivity appears to me again as something far-fetched. The same observation is heightened tenfold if my bare feet land on woodland moss or if I have before my eyes a panorama somewhat reminiscent of those of Bob Ross.

There are more and more days when I fail as a proletarian, too distracted by the human experience to try to monetize, maximize and capitalize on what I am.

I remind myself that where I fail as a careerist or as an omnipresent public figure, I am still perfectly adequate as a human.

I may not have come up with a new TV concept or written the film that will reveal me as an actress, but by looking for something to hold on to when everything was wearing me down, I was able to improvise as a beauty collector.

As a vector for transmitting emotions, I continued to let myself be moved. As a vehicle for empathy, I sought to help. As a receptacle for curiosity, I was nourished by new encounters. While everything was falling apart outside, I gave myself the gift of continuing to arrange the interior.

This step back, like momentum, quietly reconciles me with the idea that slowness is not insignificant. It allows us to observe everything that otherwise passes under our noses.

My forced leave did not allow me to resolve my heavy quest for meaning. I'll probably need a lot more than suspended production to get through this one. All this time spent rocking myself will at least have allowed me to see that even if I stop to take a breath, no more education teacher will take out his whistle and his notebook to tell me that I have failed the test.

(That said, if you ever come across the person holding the strings, don't tell them everything I've written… I've had enough life and I'm ready to go back to work!)

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