"Stumbling blocks"

It is a perfect expression of our language, so much so that we feel its shocking, disabling and unpleasant character. Yesterday, an ordinary mishap at the post office; a blue card held up by a malfunctioning machine. I understood it at once when I heard the clicking of the plastic rectangle against the edges of the slot through which it could not be inserted. No code error, no deficiency, except for the agent I call to get my card back. The young woman, who is a replacement for the holidays, I suppose, having never seen it, carelessly replies that it is impossible to get it back today; that I must come back tomorrow. I ask her what justifies her answer; nothing clear comes out. She is obviously upset by my complaint, I don't know why. The young woman is young, probably in her early thirties, and she stares at me with her one moving eye, the other being irremediably fixed, the pupil stuck upwards. I suddenly have the image of my computer mouse cursor when, due to software conflicts, it sometimes remains frozen against the upper side of the screen. Disturbed, I try to focus on her valid eye to manage to fight this woman's ill will towards me. I must be pretty much in control of myself at this point, because while I keep the pressure on, determined not to give up, I manage to get some perspective on the situation and wonder at the same time why she's doing this. Why is she stupidly and maliciously using this little temporary power that allows her to make my life difficult? Out of laziness or fear of disturbing a boss who would nevertheless give me back my card in a jiffy? Perhaps. Out of a lack of generosity and empathy? That's for sure. Lacking any argument to oppose my insistence, she directs me to another replacement, holding the financial operations counter alone. Afterwards, I realize that I had naturally passed all the people in the queue to assert my rights. Continuing my inner dialogue, I feel reassured that I am capable of this kind of "prowess" when the situation demands it. It suggests that there are indeed springs within us that can be set in motion when the need is greatest. I put this thought in a little box for that purpose to bring it out on the days when I feel incapable of any rebellious movement because of my dreadfully handicapped "good education". Because everyone knows, or at least I hope they do, that it is considerably easier to oppose in public when everything is organized so that you are in the spotlight, than to do so by tearing yourself away from the complete anonymity of everyday life. To be a convincing speaker or a combative, even revolutionary, political lieder, when there are only words to be uttered in an expected situation, is nothing. To seize the torch of revolt alone, however small, is to stand out from the mass, which at first does not appreciate it very much; it judges you as an original, a spoilsport, if one can call it a party, in the stark moroseness in which the daily life of the popular administrative environments installs us. I would like to make a distinction here with the more subdued atmospheres generated in spaces where the client is obviously king as soon as he shows more means (embassies, high-level banks...). As a result, it doesn't take much to change things; at least the feeling of things, which is already a lot to give courage to individuals. A piece of carpet a little thicker than a dirty lino, represents as soon as we enter the place, a strong psychic signal directly impacting the relaxation of our body and the reactions which follow. It certainly depends on the education we have received and it is likely that a training "to keep quiet" in any situation, passing for a teaching of politeness, condemns more certainly its bearer to curl up on himself in case of humiliating conflict. Fortunately, having been vigilant on this point for many years, I have been able to progressively get out of my gangue of a wise child in order not to let my sensitivity suffocate under the daily oppression of ordinary violence.

The second caller, less stubborn than the other, immediately goes to look for someone in charge. Luck is with me, I see soon after the most charming person working at the post office. I know her well because she has made things easier for me more than once, naturally minimizing the administrative constraints. Her smile, the softness of her expressions and her attentive look make her face shine once again with intelligence and kindness. She is, needless to say, the almost biological opposite of the first person I had to deal with. However, I am not talking about any aesthetic consideration here, but about true beauty in my eyes. A beauty which, in someone who expresses with perfect constancy so many qualities in a very often tense context, is in no way diminished by the sometimes drawn features granted to her by the accumulated days of work which, on the contrary, give her even more humanity and grace, competing with so many figures of clients who have chosen to be outrageously pampered in order to escape from misery.

Depending on whether you are constantly on the alert to promote projects that are difficult to get across or whether you are rocked by the moderate roll of a course that is "well on track", the stick in the spokes of the cart does not have the same impact in the short or medium term. How difficult it is to make your team and your entourage understand that everything that does not go, from near or far, in the direction of your project, everything that by negligence, forgetfulness, non-consideration or fatuity, is detrimental to it, is to be put on the same level as the refusal to simplify things for me of the first woman quoted in this article! In a process as fragile and costly as a creation, especially when it involves the world, any obstacle, the smallest one, is an exponential regression of the movement of the whole and is translated by an additional danger to come and thus to be avoided. This is how I have experienced it for many years, and this is what led me to painfully reconsider the naive idea I had of mutual aid and camaraderie as soon as they were placed in the balance of the requirement of a higher order: the realization of a work. For a long time, I wanted to integrate the notion of crew and even beyond that, there was a time, that of the couple and the family. These creations were shattered, not by the impact with the elements, but against the walls of the hull, too hard for such tender implications, of my boat.

Eager vain euphoria, stupid carelessness or the will to harm are not to be put on different levels because they all lead to the same result: the endangerment of a fragile tension comparable to the tenuous thread of life.

The Fates of antiquity accompany us at every step, according to whether they give birth, keep us alive or interrupt the course of our lives. They are embodied in every human relationship and direct the fate of its protagonists. The trains taking the deportees to the camps are set in motion by the same insignificant flapping of wings, by the same small, torpid look of a man or woman who does not always enjoy his or her micro-power at that moment. In my opinion, it is guilty to live without accepting to be permanently aware of it. We are too many to not be in charge of our common fate. What could send the acts and thoughts of each one to a consequence restricted to his own eyes before, resounds today, of an immediately universal range so much we are kneaded without slackening by the conscience of the injustice within our species at the world scale. This is the way it is. We can't say we didn't know we were lucky on this side of the planet, both in terms of wealth and life expectancy. Even if we don't know what to do with it, we could at least resist a little bit every day the ease of being stupid and cowardly.

For succeeding with such intelligence, enchantment and heart, I dedicate this article from the women's dayto my friend at the post office, of whom I know nothing except that she is a resistance fighter.