One Project of Life

Once we were. Now we are. Soon we might never be. I used to define myself a good kid then as a rebel. Then I changed to see myself as a lover. Then as a musician. Then as a triathlete. Then as a student. Then as a bank employee. Now as a civil servant. Then what ? I find it so hard to move on and let go of the roles we used to play in the past. I was appreciated for me being that person. I was recognized for the qualities, achievements, good grades, good running time, musical skills I used to demonstrate but now stopped. If you let go of all that, what remains ? Would you still love yourself even when you do not earn the recognition from others you think you deserve ? I don't think I can. I find it difficult to acknowledge my worth when others do not value what I have to offer. However this is the only way forward (for me at least). School and university were the easy parts. The criteria for success and appraisal were clear and measurable. But now where is the line ? I have to...

We are our memories. Aren't we ? Certainly, we don't remember much of what we experienced in the past or at least not our life in its entirety. What we tend to remember is the beginning, the end of an experience as well as its peak and low point. This is particularly interesting when you make a decision (for instance choose where to go on vacation). Daniel Kahneman explains it very well in his TED talk . However I want to discuss a specific domain of our memories: personal knowledge. I do not only mean the classes which we (are supposed to) remember from our school time. I also want to talk about the learning process which we undergo every day and makes us who we are. Every book we read, every encounter we have, every thought we create can become a life lesson and thus progressively influence our life for the best or for the worst. As Matthieu Ricard says, the quality of a teaching can be found in the degree by which this latter becomes part of your life. In my case, somet...

You are awesome. You are awesome. You are the very best. I cannot find the words to express how grateful and lucky I am to have met all of you. I believe life is not about the things you have and it's about the people you have met and moved*. And you moved me in many ways. You made my life worthwhile. Sharing is the essence of my life. If I could I'd love to share right now all my energy and all my good intentions for this world with every single one of you. I wish I could be everywhere around the globe to experience once more this feeling of joy and fulfillment together. But life has its limits. Whatever happens I will always cherish all the moments we spent united and will keep them safe deep in my heart. You gave me hope and I cannot value this enough.  Thanks for being such friend to me (in whatever way it was). I hope to meet all of you. Somewhen. Somewhere. Somehow.  In the meantime I wish you were all here. KS Daniel *I could have simply written: Life is not ab...

Recently I have been reading a bunch of bloggers (including Mark Manson and Tynan) who proclaim themselves to be minimalist in some kind of way. What does this mean ? It implies getting rid of unnecessary material possessions and burdening relationships and keeping only what you need to the strict minimum. And so did I. Maybe not to the same extent as those authors but still I threw away and donated a lot of my stuff (which felt hard at the beginning but now it has been a relief). Therefore here I am left just with myself and a few stuff and the will to focus on the few things which really matter. For me one thing which was still untouched on my bucket list was traveling. Therefore I had already planned for this summer a two-month bus/train/road trip on my own, meeting some new and old friends on the way. However, because of the recently made life decluttering, I can freely enjoy my travel without worrying about anything back home. Having fewer obligations allows me to see the whole s...

Serving someone. That’s the core of every action you take. If not yourself then somebody else. However there is an important distinction to make concerning the value we create through our time investment: who are we serving and how ? First of all we can be serving by choosing how to spend our time. At work you help your customer get some kind of value from your products. During your leisure time you might want to have fun or relax for yourself, your friends benefiting as well. You can also serve by choosing how to allocate the money you earned from your work. For every purchase you let the producer keep on further developing and selling the product you just bought. So you have the ultimate power to control those two resources: time and money. So now what ? The tricky question is to be aware of whom is benefiting from your behavior. And the list of people getting some kind of rewards from you is long, very long. But you still get to choose them. It’s up to you. You can decide to resear...

How did I become so serious ? Well... Considering my quest for personal growth I always put moderation as a key factor for more or less everything. However I seem nowadays not to be able anymore to achieve a mental state of well-being given my behaviors. I have strong deep moral values which dictate my life and try to stick to them for as much as I can. It is unfortunately extremely hard to be what you believe in all the time. According to my beliefs I should NEVER drink, sleep late, overeat, eat sweet food, waste money on things which are not worth the price and also maybe be not serious (because I cannot find a justification for silliness). This leads to me being tense and stressed pretty frequently when I am around people whose values are not similar to mine, which is ALL THE TIME. I don't really care about people thinking I'm tense or uncool but I care about myself not being at ease with my environment. Thus the inner freedom which I have been looking since the begin...

Je compte écrire ici un article en français (pour une fois) car c'est ma langue maternelle et je le traduirai plus tard en anglais pour le fun. En fait, j'aimerais partager mes réfléxions sur mon mode de vie, ma façon de pensée (qui peut être ou paraître contradictoire). En gros, pourquoi fais-je ce que je fais ? Tout d'abord, je ne veux pas vous inciter à changer vos comportements mais seulement vous ouvrir aussi à mon monde de la sorte comme ça à mon tour je pourrai comprendre vos valeurs et les actions qui en découlent. Donc, comme pour la plupart d'entre vous je l'imagine, une des conditions idéales de mon existence est d'être heureux. Ceci n'est donc pas un but pour moi mais un sous-jacent d'un autre objectif. De plus, je n'aime pas utiliser le terme "bonheur" car il a été utilisé à multiple reprises de différentes façon (et souvent confondu avec le plaisir). Je préfère choisir le mot satisfaction, contentement, bien-être ou...