Of the entanglement and the laissez-faire

Everything that accumulates in our lives, but above all everything that we drag behind us, like a ball and chain at the end of its chain.

I watched a documentary about fat people who must absolutely lose weight if they want to hope to stay alive. There was that huge British woman, intelligent, successful in her professional life, in love with her partner, but who couldn’t help but eat through some kind of compensating mechanism. When you gain six kilos a year, you end up looking like a balloon too heavy to fly. She overcame everything, it was nice to see her beautify herself, regain a taste for life, to see her couple reborn, her partner encouraging her, etc. A good dose of TV positivism. So, we compare ourselves, we tell ourselves that, somewhere, we are fat in our heads, we accumulate, we eat to avoid seeing things. Where are our misfortunes? What are the defense mechanisms used?

I’m not fat, I’ve been plump before. I have already had money, but now I have no more, the business is rather unstable, and my budget shortfalls are painfully felt. I tend to connect the dots. To this accumulation of small mistakes, tiny forgets, easy idleness. My case is far from hopeless. Yet watching this documentary brought me back to the lack of discipline I have on various aspects of my life and pushed my thoughts on what I could write as my next novel.

The idea of accumulation, sedimentation, the slow erosion of defenses, these small fragments in the window of our feelings, these tiny frustrations, this stream so weak, but stubborn, which flows through our veins and sculpts the canyons. This sudden fault causes the iceberg to collapse, the landslide, the implosion of a star.

It’s as if I had to have difficulty to move forward, as if I had to be troubled to push myself beyond my limits, as if I had to become obese to get healthy again.

It may take some time, but you end up running out of breath. It is so not worth it.

I’m confused. That’s probably a good thing. Actually, I’m still confused. It may not be treatable.

One day at a time, as we used to say to the fat lady. She took it literally. On the first day, she was made to climb a 27-story tower and she succeeded. They had to prove to her that she could do anything. One step, then, at a time. Carpe diem. Like slaves, perhaps. That’s what we say to the poor, isn’t it? To be patient with them? To persevere?

To grow and fail, a form of rebellion? Anger? Denial? And this humanity that lets itself go, why did Nature make it so? Why so carefree? These days, that is a question on everyone’s lips in Quebec. But we can quickly generalize. To be satisfied with eating chips of little joys instead of working to get back to the simplicity of living?

It is already late today. It’s not ten o’clock yet. For this Mother’s Day Sunday, it will rain. It doesn’t matter. Mothers have seen others. Me too, and I have to keep working to put butter on my bun.