Is it really possible and how can you write your life the way you want?

Is it really possible to be the author of its existence? To what extent is it possible to write your life as you wish? Can we really lead our own boat according to our free will? What is the weight of determinisms in the long, undisturbed river that is life? How can we not remain regretting what we could have done?
Ali Rebeihi and his guests, philosophers and journalists, will wonder what prevents us from truly existing.

With :

• Marianne Challan is a professor of philosophy, author of Write your life published by Éditions de l'Observatoire, 2024.
• Laurence Devillairs is a doctor and associate professor of philosophy, authorized to direct research at Sorbonne University. News: “A touch of philosophy at the museum. Philosophical visit” at the Musée d’Orsay, from October 10, 2024 to January 16, 2025.
• Mathilde Serrell, journalist at France Inter, and co-director of the documentary “Taylor Swift, the first American power” available on Francetv.fr

Try to live your life the way you want

Marianne Chaillon is a philosophy teacher, she asks her students at the very beginning of the year “what will be your rhyme?”, a response to the poem by Warl Whitmann which we also hear in the words of the professor of the Circle of Disappeared Poets, the famous “O captain My captain!”
In this sense, the teacher suggests to her students to ask themselves how they will be the author of their lives? Then, the first weeks pass and the teacher wonders again if this statement is not a false hope, are you really actors? Or are we steeped in determinisms that only make us spectators?

The philosopher sheds light on this weight but also puts her finger on this flash of lucidity which is that we only have one life, and that we must, in some way, take advantage of it, and put it into perspective. “What matters is to try to live your life as much as you can in the way you want to do it.“Laurence Devillairs thinks of this statement from his colleague, of Descartes' cogito, not that it is written this famous “cogito ergo sum” which is in reality an interpretation, but Descartes wrote: “ego sum, ego existo”. She translates this thought as follows: “Writing one's life is one of the modalities, one of the ways of not being content with being but of making one's being an existence: I am, I exist.“

Seize the opportunity to live your own life

Jankelevitch told his students, “don't miss your unique spring morning“, an injunction said like that which does not lack anxiety. But in reality, we have to go through it. Laurence Devillairs enlightens us: “There are two possible dangers, the first is that the meaning must be something extraordinary. We can give meaning, but it can remain modest; we must not make this confusion. And the other thing is that we write our life based on material that can be distressing. What we experience only happens once.“All of this ultimately means that we are constantly improvising.
Marianne Chaillon adds: “the burden of existing can be dizzying, but wouldn't it be worse to realize too late that you haven't lived enough?“.

Then comes the role of determinisms, through education, culture, family, and basically can we really write our life? Is that, a bit like the voiceover in Antigone, “for each of the characters it is already done” summarizes Marianne Chaillon?

At the same time, the idea of ​​changing social class as you move forward in life is also based, which is not a single force of personal will. “When we want we can” is a false truth, if not a cliché.
But then what should we think of the injunctions to become yourself, promised in 5 lessons, 1 book or 10 videos by personal development coaches?
“There is another path, more austere, which sells us less of the dream, it is philosophy“, replies not without humor Marianne Chaillon.

Answers and continuation of the discussion to listen to here…