An architecture professor shared this quote with us during a structural engineering seminar back at École des Ponts.

Once the final stone is in place (the "keystone"), an arch stands on its own. No need for nails, concrete, or supports. Not only does it stand, but it can also bear weight. Hence this quote from Primo Levi:

"Why, I asked myself, doesn't the arch collapse, when it has no support? It holds, I answered, because all the stones want to fall in the same motion. This thought brought me great comfort, and I keep it with me for the decisive moment, hoping that I, too, will know how to hold on when everything inside me wants to collapse."
– Primo Levi, The Truce

An unexpected application of the stress tensor to human resilience.

After more than 1,600 episodes over 16 years, American comedian Marc Maron released the final episode of his podcast this week. His last guest: Barack Obama.

I love Marc Maron, his humor, his conversations, and I'm going to be sad that he's stopping. He was one of the first to launch this long-form format at a time when podcasts weren't cool yet.

I found some powerful ideas in this conversation that connect with what I've been thinking about lately. Here are a few of Obama's remarks that struck me:

• At the end of the day, you don't need to agree on everything to work with someone.
• Know what you truly believe in. That's the starting point.
• The post-World War II period wasn't perfect. But at least there was a shared story.
• You have to be tolerant of people. As long as they're not actively trying to harm you, you have to be tolerant.
• Sometimes you win and you're happy. Sometimes you lose and you step back for a while to lick your wounds before coming back. But we're not going to try to destroy you because you lost.
• One of the necessities of liberal democracies is accepting partial victories, not just perfection. The only question is: is it moving in the right direction?
• We're probably going to overshoot the 2-degree Celsius target. Because it's very hard for humans to change their primary energy source in one generation. But we've made progress.

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Related:

• A Bit Depressed by the World
• People who make me believe (French Instagram Reel)

I still haven't added Google Analytics to know how many people read this blog.

And I'm not going to.

Oh, I'm not deluding myself, far from it! I have no secret hopes about the traffic.

Besides, I don't want to know.

This is what the Bhagavad Gita calls "fruitless work": working without expecting any results. I do the work, I do the work, I do the work, as best I can, and then... that's it. The work is the reward.

The upside: my work isn't conditioned by an audience. I don't cut corners on the pretext that "nobody's reading it." I don't rehash the same post just because "the first one did well."

I do the work. Every day. What I know how to do.

Just like everyone else, really.

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Related:

• Goodbye, stats!

Image

Last night, I was at the round table "Facing Crises: How to Prepare Collectively," moderated by Alexandre Florentin with Ziad Touat, a Crisis Management Advisor, and Christian Clot, an explorer-researcher.

Here are the key takeaways I got from it:

• Crisis management used to be primarily a military affair and was reserved for qualified personnel. Now, the goal is to involve researchers, citizens, and children as much as possible. Developing the right reflexes in those who will face the problem can make all the difference.
• Your ability to manage a crisis depends on your capacity to accept the reality of the situation. The more you are in denial ("this isn't real, it can't be happening"), the harder it will be to take steps to manage the crisis as it truly is. Mental preparation can be crucial.
• The noise level in an ideal crisis room does not exceed 80 decibels. People speak calmly; information is received, verified, and then processed, with the goal of offering the most relevant alternatives to the person who has to make a decision.
• Humility is fundamental. Be wary of those who see the crisis as an opportunity to shine and become the heroes of the situation. Also, be wary of excessive homogeneity in some groups: a crisis room full of engineers will produce an engineering solution. The same goes for soldiers. Cognitive diversity is essential.
• Social connection is the key. If you watch my videos, you know this is a subject that's on my mind. We need to be able to create social bonds at the street, neighborhood, and city level. We must be able to work with people we don't particularly like—or even don't like at all—to achieve common goals when those goals are vital for everyone.

And what about me, am I ready to face a crisis?

Probably one of the main illusions that prevent presence.

Transitions: this idea that the current moment doesn't count "for real," that it's merely the passage to a future we're waiting for.

For example: the journey before the destination—by subway, by plane, on foot. It's not a trip, not an experience, no: its only virtue is to get us somewhere. Nothing positive can happen, nothing is worth paying attention to, except for the bad surprises that will cause delays.

The wait before an event—a meeting, an appointment, an anticipated moment. It's already wasted time, where nothing interesting will happen. We're already in what comes next, in what must happen.

Because in reality, of course, these moments are just as much "the present" as any others.

They could be just as rich, just as vibrant, just as transformative.

Especially since sometimes the destination is disappointing. Or never comes.

That's what I tell myself when I put my son in the car to get on the highway: "Our vacation together starts now." This journey is fully part of it.

And who knows? It might be the best part.

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Related:

• What do you do when you do nothing?
• Time and productivity

I'm doing for ChezFilms the same thing as for the Boulengerie:

A daily video from Monday to Friday to give experts advice on my key topics: narrative strategy, public speaking, and content production.

I was supposed to start this week but I'm wrestling with the workflow: how to make videos that adapt easily across all platforms (Youtube, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and the website).

It'll be a bit more serious than my personal videos. But not much more.

This idea may be harder to grasp for those unfamiliar with the concept of "emptiness."

But I think about it more and more often. I found it in Robert Burbea's book Seeing that frees.

Here it is: what we call the ego is not a fixed property of a person.

Throughout a lifetime, a week, a day, the ego moves along a spectrum: it manifests more strongly or almost completely disappears depending on the situation.

What governs these variations?

As always: attachment.

When I want or refuse something, when I harbor desire or aversion for an object, that object and my ego appear at the same time. Buddhists call this "dependent arising."

The moment before, I might be in the flow of the present, moving freely from sensation to sensation with complete lightness: no center, no subject, no ego. I'm floating.

Then I attach to a thought. Suddenly, I want, I refuse, I ruminate. The ego is nothing other than this relationship that has just been created between this idea of myself (which was nowhere to be found the second before) and the idea of this object (which doesn't really exist).

Far from being a flaw, the ego is therefore a relationship.

A relationship between two objects that we choose to create ourselves.

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Related:

• Emptiness and Fabrication (archive)
• What Meditation Changed for Me

Today, no connection and no time so parking picture:

Image

Probably one of my most sincere post.

That's the key question and the trick question.

We feel like we're acting for others, to be kind, to help out, but we're secretly working for ourselves, for our image, for our personal satisfaction.

For example: I'm often suspicious of people who are overly nice to cashiers.

Saying "thank you, have a nice day," sure. But some people overdo it: "Thank you, have a wonderful day, ma'am. And above all, hang in there! Hang in there." The cashier nods politely; she didn't ask for all that. And I find it hard to imagine that the customer, on their way out, doesn't think to themselves "I'm a wonderful person. Look at how I understand and support the little workers."

My theory is that, secretly, this person is doing it for themselves. For their self-esteem.

And that the interaction, by its eminently artificial nature, hasn't lightened the cashier's burden one bit.

I realize I do this too, of course.

Under the guise of being helpful, participating, informing, I'm actually running PR campaigns to prove that I'm a good guy. That people think well of me.

Am I trying to understand this person to help them, or to show them that I understand? Am I telling this story to inform them, or because it makes me look good?

As usual, the goal isn't to change but to notice. Once brought to light, these flaws fade away.

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Related:

• The Battle to Exist
• Done with the BS

If I had to sum up what I've learned that matters most over the past few years, I'd say this:

1. To stand out, you need to set up a system.

Succeeding at something once, even brilliantly, isn't enough. It's the repetition of an action—even a simple one—that brings the transformation we're looking for—within ourselves or in the world.

This holds true in spirituality (nothing more repetitive and simple than meditation), in music (we even call it "practice"), in work, in communication, in relationships, in health...

Persistence in one direction matters more than intelligence, willpower, or talent. But...

2. No system without alignment.

Discipline, willpower, good resolutions (...) will never be enough to stay the course. A few days, a few months, maybe. But soon enough, we burn out, we break down.

The only way to set up a long-term system is to be perfectly aligned.

To be entirely yourself. To do what's 100% natural. To blindly follow your instinct and let everything else fall away.

Except that... Very few people truly know who they are and what they want. Their self-knowledge is obscured by intellectual ideas and decades of conditioning. Hence...

3. No alignment without self-knowledge.

This is the cornerstone of the whole structure: learning to know yourself.

Doing the inner work to deconstruct the preconceptions we hold about ourselves and the world in order to reach our truth.

This truth is the real source of action. The one that will last. And therefore change things.

"Know thyself." - Socrates
"Become who you are." - Nietzsche

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Related:

• What do you do when you're doing nothing?
• Being yourself is not a luxury
• To break through, willpower isn't enough (French video)