Бесплатный фрагмент - French Narratives

To my mother and her innate talent as a narrator.

Why France?

What you see depends on how you look.

To truly see and feel what surrounds us, we must slow down a little, perhaps even stop. Look around and finally allow ourselves to pay attention to this world. Sense its taste, colour, and smell.

Sometimes a taste for life is a matter of conviction. But the absence of taste is always a matter of life habits. How can we return to life’s subtle flavours? How can we once again savour the rich adventure of our existence? How can we attune our perception of life? For this, we must tell a story.

And if you want to know how you truly live and what will become of you, think about what you were taught and what you have learnt. A person learns from lessons and stories. What stories do you learn from?

There is a place in the world whose history is itself this incredible sensory textbook. A textbook of the art of living. The experiment with globalisation has shown that true competitive advantage comes from what only we know. Perhaps our particular knowledge isn’t explicitly defined, but it’s always felt as our exclusive competence, as personal life experience. It’s what shapes our character, our distinctiveness, our purpose. It’s what exists in our thoughts, feelings, in our understanding and sense of happiness.

Each nation, country, or people does this in its own way, oscillating from total control and adherence to its historical mission to fatalism-laden sailing under a bright flag in an ocean of opinions, ideas, and directions. But there are nations that have found — not always stable, but nevertheless — a balance between these two extremes. And their knowledge is a priceless revelation.

However strange it may seem, form and depth are created not by the object itself, but by its shadow. And this sometimes applies to us, to entire countries, nations, and their histories. Today, when thousands of people lose their lives daily, we, in conditional safety and perceiving life as an endless battle, may never actually begin to live. We are constantly and insistently offered survival. The question is, how to do this? And it’s not a method or technology. It’s a genuine art. It’s an entire story.

For example, the story of France. A story in which, immersing oneself despite all the differences between us, one might wish to be born or become French to share their unbearable thirst for life.

In the 1st century BC, in honour of the Roman victory over the tribes inhabiting the Alps, a colossal statue of Emperor Augustus was erected at the highest point of the modern town of La Turbie in the Alpes-Maritimes region. The enormous monument served both as a lighthouse and a vivid reminder to all rebellious peoples of the power and might of the Roman Empire and its emperor.

Distance lends perspective. But to understand the essence of this great thing, one must always pay attention to details. This is what numerous tourists do when visiting the restored remains of the monument to the vanished empire’s grandeur. Great things are indeed worth examining up close. Especially if this great thing is life itself.

Where does this life-affirming and rebellious spirit come from in the descendants of peoples conquered by the Romans, who through the centuries became one of the brightest and most creative nations? Where does such refinement and sensuality come from, such concentration on living rather than merely existing? And how did the country and nation carry through millennia their main enchantment, this secret guidance and the very concept of the ‘Art of Living’ — Art de vivre?

Say to yourself the names of several countries, and at the end say, ‘France…’ France. Listen as you pronounce it. France… Doesn’t it seem that the word ‘France’ generates special sensations, different from other words? Something light, sensual, lace-like, with accents of love, romance, and impression? And along with this, something incredibly bold, epic, and sacrificial. Something to which we are so receptive from birth and to which we aspire and dream of all our lives.

France has no impressive reserves of minerals, no oil rigs, no large-scale mines. But it has always managed to preserve more valuable resources, constantly renewed by it: the intelligence and talent of its citizens. This is precisely the stratum, the source that has given and continues to give the world inventive scientists, skilled craftsmen, brave travellers, romantic entrepreneurs, engineers, diplomats, and world leaders.

The land of France, together with the fruits of peasants and artisans, skilfully protected traditions and the taste of centuries-old cultural heritage. Despite constant wars and destruction, it preserved the character of its cities and landscapes, recreating this atmosphere of beauty each time. The formation of statehood and the development of its society raised worldwide attention to and attractiveness of the country’s social life.

Undoubtedly, France owes such a role in the world to the dramatic character of its history, to the constant, sometimes desperate struggle for freedom, to its miraculous rebirths, to its 40 kings, two emperors, 23 presidents, and also to politicians, revolutionaries, ministers, and heroes. And on the other hand, to its enlighteners, writers, artists, architects, and thinkers. And to its people.

There is no doubt that all nations are unique in their own way. But how many of them arose from such an incredible mixture of different peoples as France? How many of them became the birthplace of progressive ideas, the foremost of which is the Declaration of the idea of being human? How does the thirst for beauty, order, and balance coexist with regular street outbursts of emotion from categorical impatience with injustice? How, on the threshold of perceived chaos, does an incredible striving for wholeness arise? In a single instant, how is everything mobilised and committed to maintaining a balanced yet vibrant life? Where does this incredible patriotism come from, this national idea of protecting beauty, freedom, and life? Such a life that can only be lived in this history, in this architecture, and in this nature? To live in awareness and acceptance of all this as a deliberate choice, to allow oneself to say the eternal words ‘Life is art…’ at least once?

Foreword

One cannot begin life anew, but one can continue it differently

Le gain de notre vie, ce n’est pas qu’elle soit longue, c’est qu’elle soit bien employée. (The advantage of living is not measured by length, but by use.)

Michel de Montaigne

The French don’t rush through life — that’s why they succeed.

The French art of life is rarely reduced to pleasure. Its essence is measure. Not renunciation and not excess, but precise calibration of effort and presence, action and pause, aspiration and attention.

Happiness here is neither a goal nor a result. It’s a way of moving through life without losing contact with what is happening now. The French early on made the sense organs an entry to thinking: to see, to hear, to feel means to understand. But what remains decisive isn’t the sensation itself but how it’s interpreted and how it’s integrated into the picture of the world.

Intellect without bodily experience is incomplete. Pleasure isn’t opposed to reason; it passes through it. Therefore, work, food, conversation, and rest aren’t divided into ‘important’ and ‘secondary’ but are gathered into a single rhythm. A pause doesn’t hinder effectiveness; it sustains it.

French directness, the inclination to argue and grumble, is a form of critical presence. Discontent is directed not inward at life, but outward, at circumstances, authority, and the world’s imperfection. It’s a way of releasing tension without losing oneself.

Joie de vivre — this is lightness as the ability to let go without devaluing. Not resignation, but acceptance of changeability. Not escape from complexity, but refusal to live in constant haste that deprives life of rich density.

The art of life here isn’t about knowing how to enjoy but knowing how to stop in time. To notice, choose, value. To see life not as a race, but as a space in which one can already be.

It’s precisely with this, with the search for a measure between aspiration and presence, that we begin our conversation about the French balance.

Part One: The French Model

Chapter 1: The Secret of the Golden Ratio

You are not paid to work hard. In fact, you are not paid for effort at all. You are paid for results. It’s not what you do; it’s what you get done.

Larry Winget

La force d’un homme ne se doit pas juger par ses efforts extraordinaires, mais par sa conduite ordinaire. (The power of a man’s virtue should not be measured by his special efforts, but by his ordinary doing.)

Blaise Pascal

Measure as a Form of Life

The golden ratio is a proportion in which the parts and the whole are in harmony. It’s found in nature, architecture, art, and, far more rarely, in human life. Meanwhile, the golden ratio isn’t only a formula for beauty but also a rare ability to calibrate desires, efforts, goals, and life itself.

When measure is lost, even the most brilliant achievements cease to be felt as happiness. A person can possess much whilst losing the sense of wholeness. The reason lies in the loss of proportion between what they want and what is sufficient for them.

Over time, desires became more complex; ideals, ambitions, and goals appeared. These words gave life direction, but along with this came intensified tension. The quality of existence came increasingly to be measured by the quantity of what was achieved rather than the depth of what was lived. Thus arose the idea of an endless race, and together with it, the chronic sense that happiness is always somewhere ahead.

In attempting to ensure confidence in the future, a person increasingly loses contact with the present. They begin to live in a mode of postponement: ‘Just a little more, and then.’ But it’s precisely this ‘then’ that deprives them of the ability to feel now.

On the Quality of Time

We can measure time by the clock, but its quality is determined not by minutes but by attention. The simplest pleasures — a walk, a meal, a conversation — often turn out to be more satisfying than complex and expensive constructions promising a ‘high standard of living’.

Possession doesn’t equal presence; a car doesn’t replace the sensation of one’s own body in motion, and luxury doesn’t guarantee inner comfort. Things create an illusion of future security but often steal the ability to be in the present.

Modern culture has imperceptibly substituted meanings: vanity has become ambition, greed — success, exhaustion — productivity, and haste — the norm.

With the blurring of concepts, the sensation of life becomes blurred too. It becomes ever harder for a person to distinguish the necessary from the excessive, and need from imposed desire. The more things are ‘needed’, the less time remains. And a deficit of time quickly turns into a deficit of life itself.

Where True Quality of Life Resides

True quality of life lies in perception, in sensations, and in the clarity of one’s own meanings. In the ability to feel, think, be engaged in culture, space, and history. This is precisely what constitutes the human form of existence.

Balance is the inner equivalent of the golden ratio. Balance between desire and sufficiency, effort and enjoyment, goal and presence, action and awareness.

Different cultures have different models of this equilibrium. None of them is universal. The best is the one that helps a person maintain a living sense of their own life.

Why the French Model Works

The French have developed a special, remarkably whole model of relating to life. It manifests in the rhythm of the day, in food, in clothing, in the manner of arguing, in the ability to stop. This isn’t style, and it isn’t a pose; it’s a skill. Its basic principle is simple and difficult at the same time: happiness is what you can do every day.

The French consciously develop habits of measure. They don’t strive for the maximum; they strive for precision. In this sense their ‘unhurriedness’ is deceptive: in matters of quality of life they are surprisingly disciplined.

The Latin word disciplina means ‘order’, and its root discere means ‘to learn’. To be disciplined means to construct form. French culture strives to establish form in the most important thing — in the ability to live without losing one’s taste for life.

This model doesn’t promise happiness as a result. It offers something else: to learn to maintain the equilibrium in which life feels alive. This is precisely what we shall discuss further.

Facts and Contexts

— The term qualité de vie in France was originally used not in economics but in philosophy and the sociology of everyday life.

— French culture long opposed mesure (measure) to Anglo-Saxon success.

— The French school of aesthetics has always considered proportion an ethical category, not only a visual one.

— In 18th-century France, it was considered bad form to want too much: excessive aspiration was perceived as a sign of inner instability.

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Notes in the Margins

— Quality of life is the proportionality between ‘I want’ and ‘enough’.

— Possession doesn’t equal presence.

— Balance isn’t renunciation of desires, but the ability not to lose life between them.

— Happiness is a skill of daily adjustment, not the result of a sprint.

Chapter 2: Life Balance

How we understand quality of life and what form and content have to do with it

In reading the lives of great men, I found that the first victory they won was over themselves… self-discipline with all of them came first.

Harry S. Truman

I want man to act and live, not to freeze.*

Michel de Montaigne

Balance is not a standstill, but coordinated movement.*

Pierre Sansot

Why Numbers Don’t Measure Life

We’re accustomed to measuring quality of life by numbers: income, square metres, the amount of free time, journeys, productivity indicators. Numbers create a sense of control. It seems that if everything is properly distributed, life will become stable and comprehensible.

But numbers don’t measure the main thing: inner state, the taste of the moment, the ability to be alive rather than just productive. Quality of life isn’t composed of items; it’s composed of rhythm. Of how people feel about themselves within the stories they live.

Balance isn’t the equalising of scales. Balance is the moment when inner narratives cease to pull a person in different directions.

False Choice and Its Consequences

We’re accustomed to choosing one of two: to be strong or gentle, to think or feel, to work or live, to maintain form or allow ourselves spontaneity. The world seems to demand unambiguousness, as if complexity were a mistake. Contradiction within is perceived as weakness, not as the natural state of a living person.

French culture leads a person out of this false choice. It reminds us: it’s possible to be rational and emotional, serious and alive, disciplined and sensitive simultaneously. This doesn’t destroy personality; it makes it rich and stable.

Balance is about coordinating inner lines into one story that moves forward.

Form and Content: Not Conflict, but Dialogue

Within us live pairs that we’re accustomed to clashing with each other: form and content, useful and pleasant, sensation and consciousness, meaning and action. We’re taught: ‘choose one.’ However, these pairs weren’t created for struggle but for dialogue.

Form is a way of presence. Content is the meaning of what’s happening. The useful sustains structure. The pleasant sustains life. Sensation is the body. Consciousness is thought.

We set the useful against the pleasant. The French unite them.

We say, ‘First work, then the meaning.’ The French ask, ‘If there’s no meaning now, what kind of work is this?’

We oppose beauty and functionality. French logic is different: if it’s beautiful, it means it’s functional for the soul.

When Balance Is Broken

When form and content diverge, a person loses stability.

If there is meaning but no action, it is dreaminess. If there are actions but no meaning, it is burnout. Style without depth is emptiness. If there is depth but no form, the person disappears from their own story.

When consciousness is active, the body is silent, and life turns into a project. When sensations are turbulent, consciousness can’t keep up; it’s chaos.

France serves as a mirror of how these levels can unite. A walk, food, conversation, debate, a pause — all this is simultaneously form and content, action and meaning. As if life itself is saying, ‘I’m already here.’

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Balance as Rhythm, Not Instruction

We live in the logic of ‘first the obligatory, then the permitted’. First the result, then the taste; first the difficult period, then life.

French culture is arranged differently. It has no rigid boundary between the serious and the beautiful, between everyday life and aesthetics, or between the moment and meaning. This isn’t frivolity. It’s the ability to live by rhythm, not by checklist.

Balance isn’t stability. It’s a movement where an individual stops labelling themselves as ‘correct’ or ‘alive’.

Return to Oneself

We live in a culture of reflections. Quality of life is increasingly substituted by its image. A person checks not against sensations but against standards: effectiveness, success, development. They compare themselves with an ideal that doesn’t exist.

Such a race destroys the ability to hear oneself. But it’s precisely spontaneity, silence, small joys, and moments of presence that create a taste for life.

France returns to a person the right to check against themselves. The meaning of the day can lie not in productivity, but in the precision of form, in the sensation that you lived in accord with yourself.

Balance as a Form of Maturity

The French live not in the logic of ‘happiness must be earned’ but in the logic of ‘happiness must be able to be noticed’. For them, happiness isn’t an event but a skill. A competence requiring practice: the ability to stop, refuse, enjoy, and be honest with oneself.

A taste for life isn’t weakness and isn’t luxury. It’s a form of reason. Because if a person doesn’t know how to feel, they don’t know how to choose. And if they don’t know how to choose, they lose the authorship of their life.

The French balance isn’t ideal and isn’t perfect. It’s an honest model of life amongst contradictions, without loss of self.

Facts and Contexts

— In 18th-century French philosophy, forme and contenu were considered ethical categories, not aesthetic ones.

— The French labour system long considered plaisir (pleasure) an element of stability, not a threat to discipline.

— The very word ‘équilibre’ in French is more often used in a dynamic sense, not as a static state.

— French culture permits contradiction as the norm, hence the love of debates, argument, nuances.

Notes in the Margins

— Balance is the accord of inner narratives, not a perfect schedule.

— Form and content strengthen each other; they don’t compete.

— Pleasure is part of human functionality.

Chapter 3: Quality of Life

Quality of life depends on the narratives we believe in: the role of power, society, and the French ability to hold contradictions

Le bonheur n’est ni hors de nous ni en nous. Il est en Dieu, et hors et en nous. (Happiness is neither without us nor within us. It is in God, both without us and within us.)

Blaise Pascal

Quality of life is, above all, quality of presence.*

Yves Bonnefoy

Narratives are not stories we tell. They are structures within which we choose, breathe, and define what is permissible. Quality of life depends not only on what a person does but also on the narrative within which he or she lives whilst doing it. It is precisely the narrative that forms the inner configuration: what is normal for you and what is worthy, what you have the right to and what you perceive as a threat, what you are ready to fight for and what you accept as inevitable.

The French model is valuable because it shows that a quality life is not the absence of contradictions but the ability to hold them. France teaches resilience not through unambiguity, but through the ability to withstand the simultaneously incompatible: fear and desire, duty and pleasure, calculation and intuition, strict logic and the pull towards the beauty of disorder.

A country that has passed through so many falls and rebirths knows a simple thing: a person improves and grows not where everything is perfectly arranged, but where the structures sometimes shake but neither collapse nor break the one living within them.

Historical Flexibility

France has survived changes of regime, revolutions, dictatorships, humiliations, and uprisings. And each time it not only survived, it reassembled its identity anew.

Forms changed: monarchy, empire, republic. But the idea of human dignity sprouted again and again. It can be crushed, burnt out, or distorted, but it returns like grass through asphalt.

This quality — flexibility without loss of essence — is one of the key skills of personal balance.

A person also passes through epochs: dependence, rebellion, achievement, burnout, restructuring, maturity. Roles and circumstances change. But what matters is not what changes, but what remains.

Essence is not form. It is the inner meaning that survives any form.

Freedom, Style, Community, and Resistance

These four elements are the foundation of the French balance. They exist only in interaction:

Freedom — the right to be oneself, to speak aloud, to make mistakes. Style — the way to live beautifully even in the mundane. Community — the ability to be part of something greater. Resistance — the refusal to reconcile oneself with what destroys meaning.

When they are balanced, the system is alive. When one force suppresses the others, a crisis begins. It is the same within a person: freedom without community is loneliness, community without freedom is dissolution, style without meaning is emptiness, and resistance without values is destruction.

The French combination is important precisely because of this: it shows how inner forces can coexist without destroying one another.

Why French Narratives Work as a Model

France is neither an ideal nor a standard. It is an honest mirror. It is sufficiently complex to be meaningful, sufficiently comprehensible to be relatable, sufficiently dramatic to speak of destiny, and sufficiently plastic to demonstrate evolution.

France demonstrates that one can make mistakes, argue, suffer, begin anew — and not lose oneself.

Facts and Contexts

— France is one of the few countries where revolution became part of national identity rather than a trauma they try to forget.

— The Fifth Republic is already the fifth attempt at institutional balance, and it was originally designed as a compromise rather than an ideal.

— French political culture permits conflict as a form of participation rather than a threat to stability.

— The very concept of résistance in France is not only historical but commonplace as well: to resist stupidity, unification, and loss of taste.

Notes in the Margins

— Quality of life is determined by what contradictions a person is capable of holding.

— Historical flexibility is a skill, not an accident.

— Inner equilibrium is born from the interaction of forces, not their suppression.

— To live meaningfully means not to lose oneself in the change of roles.

Chapter 4: The Role of Power and Society, and the French Capacity to Hold the Incompatible

Renoncer à sa liberté, c’est renoncer à sa qualité d’homme, aux droits de l’humanité, même à ses devoirs. (To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties.)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

La démocratie n’est pas un régime politique, c’est un régime de la politique, c’est-à-dire un régime de la contestation de l’ordre établi. (Democracy is not a political regime; it is a regime of politics, that is, a regime of contestation of the established order.)

Jacques Rancière

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Quality of Life Depends on the Narratives We Believe In

Quality of life is the result not of external conditions, but of inner architecture.

We do not live in countries and professions; we live in stories we consider permissible for ourselves. A person can live in poverty and feel fulfilled. Another can have everything and feel emptiness. This is not a paradox but the result of narrative: one lives in the story ‘I have the right’, another in the story ‘I am deficient’, a third in the story ‘I must’, and a fourth in the story ‘I choose’.

France is interesting because it is a country of open narratives. They are not hidden beneath a layer of politeness and are not masked by rituals. They are articulated, discussed, and contested. The French are not afraid of their own contradictions and don’t turn them into a source of shame. Moreover, it is precisely power and society that constantly reassemble these narratives. This process is itself part of the national balance.

How Power Forms Narratives and How the French Resist This

Any power forms its own stories: through language, education, symbols, media, laws, holidays, and collective memory. It always tries to set the frame: ‘This is who we are’, ‘This is what is right’, ‘This is what is worthy’.

France is distinguished by the fact that its society almost never accepts these frames unconditionally. The French do not seek to destroy power; they seek to talk to it. They argue, protest, clarify, and resist, preserving the right to personal meaning.

A Frenchman will rarely say, ‘That’s how it’s done; therefore, it’s right.’ Rather, ‘Who decided this and why?’ This is not rebellion for rebellion’s sake, but respect for oneself as a bearer of meaning.

The History of France as a History of Resistance to Imposed Plots

Louis XIV created a narrative of absolute power, where the king was the centre of the world. Versailles became the theatre of this plot. But parallel to this, philosophers, satirists, and playwrights gradually undermined it.

The French Revolution became the moment when the old narrative ceased to work. The people refused the story of the subject and created the story of the citizen.

In the 20th century, the state maintained the colonial plot of the ‘civilising mission’. But intellectuals, from Camus to Sartre, openly declared: this narrative is false and contradicts dignity.

France accepted a simple conclusion: it is impossible to live in a story that contradicts one’s own conception of oneself. The form of power can change — monarchy, republic, empire — but the content of life remains a space of personal freedom and reflection.

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How Convictions Form Quality of Life

Convictions are inner laws. They determine what I can and cannot do, what is normal and what is shameful, what I have the right to feel and want to do. A person’s emotional architecture depends on these laws. French convictions directly influence quality of life:

— Pleasure is normal. Not a privilege and not a weakness, but part of life.

— The right to an opinion is not a luxury. Even an error doesn’t cancel the right to speak.

— Culture is a necessity. Books, films, museums are the ways of preserving us humans.

— Work should not consume life. It is important, but not absolute.

— Style is self-respect. Beauty is a form of presence, not excess.

If a person considers pleasure to be guilt, they will punish themselves for joy. If they believe they must be convenient, they will not live their own life. If emotions are perceived as weakness, half the personality will be hidden.

The French Capacity to Hold the Incompatible

The French know how to live in tension between poles: rationality and passion, order and freedom, individualism and solidarity, rules and their violation. This is not chaos. This is psychological flexibility. The French capacity to hold the incompatible is not national eccentricity but a skill. We are accustomed to thinking: one must choose. The French live differently: one can be different, and therein lies strength.

A person who has mastered this skill ceases to be an object of circumstances. They can be gentle and strong, confident and doubting, practical and romantic, serious and playful. This is his inner balance.

Facts and Contexts

— In France, protest is a recognised form of civic participation, not a deviation.

— French political culture permits public conflict as a means of preserving balance, not destroying it.

— French philosophy of the 20th century (Sartre, Camus, Foucault) formed precisely as a critique of imposed narratives of power.

— Students in French schools are accustomed to debate, argue, and doubt from an early age.

Notes in the Margins

— We live in narratives, not in circumstances.

— The right to doubt is a form of inner freedom.

— An imposed narrative requires dialogue, not submission.

— Contradictions are a source of stability, not a threat to it.

Chapter 5: Wisdom in Selflessness

C’est une perfection absolue, et pour ainsi dire divine, que de savoir jouir loyalement de son estre. (‘Tis an absolute and, as it were, a divine perfection, for a man to know how loyally to enjoy his being.)

Michel de Montaigne

Taking care of oneself doesn’t mean putting oneself above others; it means staying alive.*

André Comte-Sponville

There is an expression that precisely describes the French approach to life: a person is not obliged to earn his or her own existence. This sounds daring for cultures where self-respect appears only after results. But it is precisely here that one of the key features of the French model manifests itself in what might be called wisdom in selfishness.

The word ‘selfishness’ has long become an accusation. It frightens, suppresses desires, and justifies the denial to enjoy life. In France it sounds different — as care for one’s own resilience. This is the ability not to write off one’s desires as a hindrance, not to postpone joy to ‘later’, and not to turn life into an endless waiting for permission.

Sometimes it is said, ‘French selfishness doesn’t wound others; it saves the French themselves.’ This isn’t about narcissism. This is about refusing self-destructive sacrifice. Such selfishness doesn’t require the disappearance of others; it requires the presence of the person in their own life. It is gentle and sober: respect for one’s time, body, rhythms, and for oneself not as a function but as a living being.

Wise Selfishness: The Right to Be, Not to Seem

The French rarely strive to make an impression. Their interest is not to appear but to live. The ability to live ‘for oneself’ doesn’t mean indifference to others. It begins with recognition of a simple fact: a person torn away from themselves cannot be generous, loving, or stable.

Wise selfishness manifests in the rhythm of everyday life: to eat sitting down rather than on the run, not to turn lunch into a technical pause, to calmly say, ‘Today I shall be alone,’ and to allow oneself to slow down even if the world demands acceleration.

A Frenchman rarely lives in the logic of ‘Someday I shall allow myself joy.’ His model is different: if joy isn’t built into life now, it may disappear completely. Reward is already here: in a cup of coffee, in conversation, in the light beyond the window, in a walk, in the pleasure of being alive rather than in the promise of the future. This is the antithesis of the culture of ‘later’: later I’ll rest, later I’ll be happy, later life will begin. The French experience is harsher: if you’re not living now, you’re not living at all.

What Wise Selfishness Looks Like in Real Life

It is almost invisible. It’s an inner agreement with oneself: I have the right to be human, not a machine. It’s small but constant: to turn off the phone at lunch, to leave the evening empty, not to do the unnecessary ‘because that’s how it’s done’, and to allow oneself to choose quality — not for status, but for the sensation of life.

A person living in this logic distinguishes states. They understand where there is ordinary fatigue and where there is an alarm signal. They rest not because one ‘can’, but because one must. They aren’t afraid of pause, refusal, or choice in favour of themselves.

The French rarely experience guilt over rest. They don’t need to justify themselves for a lazy morning or an evening with a glass of wine. This isn’t rebellion against obligations but a sober understanding of the scale of human energy: it isn’t infinite. To be good for others, one must first be alive.

The French won’t say, ‘I’m sorry, I need time for myself.’ They’ll say, ‘This evening I’m at my place.’ This is a form of inner dignity.

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Life Not as a Project, but as Presence

We’re accustomed to living as if life were a long improvement project. One must develop, become better, build a career, and ‘finally become oneself’. In such logic, stopping looks like defeat.

French culture offers a different view: life isn’t a project, but presence. It consists of moments, not only of plans. Its quality is determined not by achievements, but by the ability to be in what is happening.

This manifests in details: in unhurried speech, in a walk without purpose, in lunch as a ritual of return to oneself, in the ability to say ‘no’ without justifications, and in the refusal to confuse ‘to be’ and ‘to seem’.

Wise selfishness is formulated simply: if I don’t take care of my life, no one will do it for me. The French rarely prove their value. They prefer to live valuably. Not correctly, but truly.

Facts and Contexts

— In France, the right to disconnect (droit à la déconnexion) is officially enshrined: the right not to respond to work messages outside working hours.

— French philosophy of the 20th century considered pleasure as part of rationality, not its opposite.

— In French culture, refusal (‘non’) isn’t considered aggression. It is a form of honesty.

Notes in the Margins

— Life is not the future but the present moment.

— Presence is more important than productivity.

— Caring for oneself is part of your meaning, not a luxury.

— Being alive is more important than being correct.

Chapter 6: The Emotional Intelligence of the French

How to derive meaning from emotions

Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point. (The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.)

Blaise Pascal

Emotion is thought seeking its form.*

Julia Kristeva

In France, Emotion Is Not Treated — It Is Listened To

If you ask foreigners what surprises them most about the French, many will answer: style, cuisine, politics. But almost everyone notes one thing — their attitude to emotions.

In France, emotions aren’t considered a weakness. They are language. They aren’t ashamed of them, don’t hide them, and don’t mask them with rationality. A person who knows how to express feelings is perceived not as uncontrollable, but as honest and mature.

French culture understands emotion not as chaos, but as thought in a state of birth — meaning that hasn’t yet found form. Emotion appears before words, before explanations, before logic. It’s the first vibration of inner life.

The French are emotionally expressive, but not hysterical. Their strength lies in emotional literacy. They know how to talk about subtle shades of experience, to argue without destroying connection, to enjoy without considering pleasure a weakness, and to live through sadness as part of life. For them, emotions aren’t noise but sensors of meaning.

French emotion isn’t about chaos but about authenticity and nuance. Emotions aren’t suppressed, but neither do they control the person. They become the language of inner life, a way to distinguish, understand, and attune oneself. Unlike cultures where emotion is a risk, in France emotion is authenticity.

Emotions as Language, and Not a Problem

The French tradition doesn’t divide emotions into ‘good’ and ‘bad’.

It divides them into honest and dishonest. An honest emotion is one that a person truly lives through. A dishonest one is what he or she portrays to meet expectations.

The French choose the first in everyday life, in culture, in love, and in politics. Therefore, the French argument isn’t simply an exchange of opinions but a search for truth through the emotional collision of meanings.

Emotions don’t need to be suppressed or corrected. This is the language by which humans speak to themselves. Sadness speaks of the important. Joy — of coinciding with oneself. Anger — of violated boundaries. Longing — of lack of meaning.

Thus emotional life turns from chaos into a map by which one can navigate.

Emotions and Meaning: Two Sides of One Axis

In many cultures, emotions and meaning are separated by levels: emotions below, meaning above. Emotions are considered childish, meaning adult. French culture destroys this pyramid.

Emotions and meanings stand side by side. Emotion gives impulse. Meaning sets direction. Action completes the cycle.

If you remove emotion, meaning dries up. If you remove meaning, emotion goes blind. If you remove action, everything turns into noise.

This is precisely why French emotionality seems mature: the shadow of meaning is always present in it.

Expression of Emotions as Social Norm

In France it isn’t customary to wear protective emotional armour. It’s normal to laugh loudly, argue passionately, be surprised openly, and be sad without justifications. Emotional expressiveness doesn’t make a person ‘difficult’; it makes them alive.

Emotions are built into everyday life. Depth can arise in conversation with a stranger. Joy — in the smell of bread. Meaning — in the evening light on the walls of houses.

Special occasions aren’t needed for this. The capacity to be present is needed.

French emotionality is rhythm. It doesn’t destroy but sustains inner balance.

Why Does This Matter for Quality of Life?

Because emotions are navigation. If humans don’t feel, they lose the ability to choose. If they suppress feelings, they lose connection with themselves.

French culture has preserved understanding of emotion as a partner, not an enemy. French emotional intelligence isn’t about drama but about inner architecture. People know how to name feelings, understand boundaries, hear needs, be flexible and mature.

They cease to react automatically. They begin to respond from meaning.

This is precisely why French emotional culture organically fits into the model of life balance. It teaches a rare ability — to be alive within one’s own life.

Facts and Contexts

— In the French language there exist many words for subtle emotional states (mélancolie, malaise, trouble, ennui, élan, frisson, légèreté).

— French philosophy of the 20th century considered emotion as a form of cognition.

— In French schools, verbalisation of experiences through essays and discussions is encouraged.

— Public debates permit emotionally coloured argumentation as the norm.

Notes in the Margins

— Emotions are navigation, not system failure.

— A named feeling loses its destructive force.

— Suppressed emotions don’t disappear; they become distorted.

— Being emotional means being precise, not weak.

Chapter 7: Convictions as the Foundation of Quality of Life

Chacun appelle barbarie ce qui n’est pas de son usage. (Everyone calls barbarism whatever is not his own practice.)

Michel de Montaigne

Moins on a de connaissances, plus on a de convictions. (The less knowledge one has, the more convictions one has.)

Boris Cyrulnik

We rarely think about how much quality of life depends not on circumstances but on the stories we believe in. Convictions determine what seems normal, permissible, worthy, and possible. They become the inner climate in which we live every day.

One can feel warmth even in the cold, and one can freeze in abundance. It isn’t the external environment that determines life’s temperature, but the narrative — the inner voice that either sustains or destroys.

This voice doesn’t arise by itself. It’s formed by family, experience, culture, and, to a greater extent than is customarily acknowledged, by the state. Power always strives to tell a person the story of who he or she is, how they should live, and what to consider right. And here France demonstrates a special model: it not only permits a multiplicity of personal stories but also encourages the ability to argue with the state narrative.

In France, no narrative is considered final. As soon as power offers a single version of reality, society responds with its own. Political narrative here is perceived not as dogma, but as a proposal. This is a constant dialogue that doesn’t destroy the country but keeps it in a living state.

Convictions as the Inner Architecture of Life

Convictions are filters of perception. Through them a person looks at relationships, work, rest, desires, and the boundaries of the possible.

‘I must suit others’ — and life is built around others’ expectations. ‘I must always be strong’ — and weakness turns into pain. ‘I have no right to pleasure’ — and joy evokes guilt. ‘I must earn rest’ — and rest never comes.

French convictions form a different climate. At their foundation lies an unspoken premise: life doesn’t need to be earned; it needs to be lived.

Pleasure isn’t a by-product but part of rhythm. Freedom isn’t a reward but a right. Opinion isn’t a privilege but the foundation of communication. Culture isn’t entertainment but a form of sustaining meaning. Rest isn’t weakness but a condition of stability. Beauty isn’t caprice but respect for the moment.

Such convictions change the very matter of life. People cease to punish themselves for being alive, don’t drive themselves to exhaustion, don’t close off emotions, and maintain meaning not only in thoughts but in the form of life. Quality of life becomes not the result of willpower but a consequence of inner architecture.

The French Capacity to Hold Contradictions

Many cultures demand choice: rationality or emotion, order or chaos, individualism or community. France chooses differently: to embrace the opposites.

This is a country of strict bureaucracy and improvisation, philosophers and poets, revolutions and rituals, freedom and form. It doesn’t strive to eliminate complexity; it doesn’t simplify life at the cost of impoverishing it.

In psychology this is called maturity: the ability to withstand tension between poles without destroying oneself. Just as an adult person can be gentle and firm simultaneously, France knows how to be structural and alive, rational and sensual.

This habit of not removing complexity is the key to stability. Contrast here isn’t a threat but a resource. A person can have more than one role and not explain this to themselves as a problem.

The French balance says: you can be different, and this isn’t an error but a privilege. One can live not in one story, but in an entire library, without losing sight of the main one.

Facts and Contexts

— The French tradition of public debate forms in people the habit of contesting ideas without destroying relationships — this is a rare cultural skill.

— In French philosophy after the Enlightenment, conviction was always considered a hypothesis rather than truth, hence the high tolerance for disagreement.

— The French education system encourages essays — thinking where what is valued isn’t the correct answer but an argued position.

— Historically, France has experienced more changes in its political system than most European countries. This has formed a collective habit of not attaching oneself to one form of identity.

Notes in the Margins

— Your convictions are the climate in which your life lives.

— Personality is not destroyed by contradictions; rather, it is destroyed when complexity is prohibited.

— You aren’t obliged to accept narratives that make you smaller.

— The ability to argue with someone else’s story is a form of inner freedom.

Chapter 8: Historical Flexibility

How France changed form but didn’t lose meaning

The new is not always better, but the stagnant is always dead.

Alexis de Tocqueville [Paraphrased]

Memory is needed not to preserve the past unchanged, but to enable change.*

Pascal Bruckner

When we speak of life balance, we usually recall discipline, routine, and control. But genuine balance is born not from maintaining form but from the ability to change without losing meaning. No person remains the same at different stages of life, and the attempt to freeze in a past version almost always leads to inner conflict.

One of the most instructive traits of France is its ability to remain itself and not lose its meaningful core, whilst at the same time changing more radically than most European countries.

This ability to change without destroying deep foundations is historical flexibility — a key skill of balance, applicable to human life as well.

Historical Flexibility of France: Form Changes, Meaning Remains

The history of France is a series of rebirths: monarchy, republic, empire, monarchy again, republic again, occupation, Resistance, new republic, new social contracts. If one imagined the country as a person, they would have experienced dozens of crises and identity changes.

But each time France returned to itself. Not to the former form, but to the former meaning: human dignity, the right to voice, subjecthood. This shows a simple truth: a crisis doesn’t destroy personality if meaning remains alive.

Lesson 1: Mistakes Are Not the End of the Story

France doesn’t hush up mistakes; it revises them. Revolutionary terror is recognised as tragedy. The colonial past as trauma. Collaborationism as shame, openly recognised.

There is particular dignity in this. A person capable of naming his mistake ceases to be its prisoner. A country acknowledging its own wounds becomes more stable. Historical flexibility isn’t forgetting traumas but refusing to turn them into poison.

Lesson 2: Crisis Is Not Failure, but Reboot

In French history, crisis is a mechanism of renewal. After the defeat of 1870, the Third Republic emerged. After 1940 — a more mature political culture. After 1968 — a renewed understanding of freedom and rights.

Crisis here isn’t proof of inadequacy but a signal: the former form has exhausted itself.

Lesson 3: Form Is Secondary, Content Is Primary

Political forms changed, but the idea of human dignity remained central. In the French narrative, this resonated unchangingly: a person cannot be a thing.

France seems to remind us: when form ceases to work, it needn’t be defended to the end. It needs to be let go. This is remarkably similar to personal crises that tell a person, ‘You’ve outgrown the former form; it’s time to move on.’

Facts and Contexts

— French state archives become publicly accessible after 50 years, which contributed to forming a strong culture of transparency and historical responsibility.

— The French Constitution originally builds on the possibility of changes: the idea of révision (revision) is considered normal, not a threat.

— After the Second World War, France officially recognised collaborationism as part of its history — a rare example of national honesty.

— The culture of memory is built not on heroicising form but on comprehending ruptures. Hence the cult of discussion, archives, and museums.

Notes in the Margins

— You can change form without betraying yourself.

— Mistakes aren’t a sentence, but material for the next version.

— Crisis isn’t destruction but an invitation to reassembly.

— Meaning survives forms if you allow it to remain alive.

Chapter 9: Why French Narratives Work as a Model of Balance

Wholeness is not the absence of contradictions, but the ability to live in them.*

Albert Camus

A mature society doesn’t erase tensions — it learns to hold them.*

Marcel Gauchet

Despite its complex history, multilayered nature, and series of internal conflicts, France remains remarkably whole. But this isn’t wholeness that can be fixed or preserved. It’s alive and mobile, like a person who has passed through many roles and crises but hasn’t lost his own voice.

It is precisely this living wholeness that makes France an accurate model of human balance. It shows: one can be contradictory and stable; one can experience crises and not lose meaning; one can change form and preserve content.

France doesn’t hide its weaknesses and doesn’t mask its fractures. It exists in a mode of constant self-analytical questioning: ‘Who are we? What is important to us? How do we preserve ourselves in a changing world?’ In this process, humans easily recognise themselves.

France isn’t an ideal, and therein lies its strength. In an ideal world, it’s impossible to see one’s own complexity. In France one can.

France Doesn’t Hide Its Inner Stories

In many cultures, common meanings are implied but not articulated. The opposite is true in France. Values, conflicts, historical traumas, moral disputes, and questions of freedom are brought to the surface.

The country lives in a mode of public internal monologue. Sometimes loud, sometimes painful, sometimes contradictory. But it is precisely this that makes narratives transparent: one can see how meanings are born, collide, transform, and reassemble.

A person’s inner life is arranged the same way. Unspoken stories control from the shadows. Spoken ones become material for growth. France chose the second path — the path of conscious complexity.

France as a Model of Multilayered Personality

France has its central meaning: respect for dignity and freedom. It has identity: the voice of a subject, not of an object of history. It has values, conflicts, lines of development, and crises.

This structure remarkably resembles the inner architecture of a person. Everyone has meaning, roles, contradictions, and a path. France allows one to see this system on a historical scale and thereby more clearly recognise it within oneself. Looking at France, we look not at a country but at an enlarged reflection of human psychology.

Holding Complexity as a Form of Stability

It’s customary to think that wholeness is born from simplicity. France shows the opposite: wholeness arises from the ability to withstand tension between opposites without destroying any of them.

Freedom and order, rationality and emotions, individuality and community, style and practicality don’t compete but coexist in French experience. This isn’t compromise but maturity.

In exactly the same way, people aren’t obliged to choose between strength and gentleness, logic and feelings, or autonomy and closeness. They can be multifaceted, and it’s precisely in this that they find stability.

Presence as Philosophy of Life

French culture values presence above busyness. Life here isn’t a project but a space of living. Not only to do, but to be.

This manifests in everything: in conversation, in food, in a walk, in debate. A Parisian café isn’t a place of consumption but a laboratory of presence. People sit there not from idleness, but because it’s part of the rhythm — to observe, think, and feel.

The French aren’t afraid to spend time. They’re afraid not to notice life.

Meaning as Rhythm, Not Summit

In many cultures, meaning is conceived as a height that must be reached. In France it’s built into the rhythm of life. Here there’s no rigid boundary between the elevated and the everyday.

Philosophical conversations coexist with the joy of taste, and great ideas with simple gestures. Meaning doesn’t require distance. It’s present in the movement of life itself.

One who absorbs this approach ceases to chase meaning as a rare reward. He or she begins to find it where they live now.

France as a Mirror of Human Inner Dynamics

France is chosen as a model of balance because it shows what people look like when they think, feel, argue, make mistakes, restructure themselves, and remain themselves in the process.

Its history is an enlarged projection of inner life. Here one can see how meaning survives crisis, how identity confronts pressure, how values require confirmation, and how form collapses whilst content survives.

France isn’t a complete story but a constant attempt to live with dignity. And it is precisely this incompleteness that makes it such an accurate model of human balance.

Facts and Contexts

— In France the logic of art de vivre is used, not the managerial ‘work-life balance’.

— The school dissertation teaches holding thesis and antithesis simultaneously.

— Cafés historically were spaces of philosophy, not ‘unproductive leisure’.

— Protest in France is a form of participation, not destruction of the system.

Notes in the Margins

— Wholeness doesn’t equal simplicity.

— Presence is a form of respect for life.

— Balance is born not from choosing ‘one’, but from the ability to hold ‘several’.

— The history of a person and the history of a country follow the same logic: form changes; meaning either survives or doesn’t.

Chapter 10: French Sketches

How Balance Lives

Le vrai luxe, c’est le temps vécu. (To live is not to breathe, it is to act.)

Georges Perec

La liberté commence là où l’on cesse de se sentir coupable d’exister. (Freedom begins where one ceases to feel guilty for existing.)

Pascal Bruckner

Parisian cafés are officially recognised as cultural heritage, not as gastronomy, but as social space.

France is one of the few countries where solitude in a public place isn’t stigmatised: a person alone at a table is normal, not a signal of misfortune.

The French tradition of dispute (debates) formed from the time of 18th-century salons, where argument was considered a sign of intellect.

Bricolage is officially supported as a form of cognitive activity for the elderly (research by Inserm).

Café

To understand how French narratives live, one needn’t go into archives and read treatises. It’s enough to enter an ordinary Parisian café and sit a little. A French café is a miniature of the country. Not a place where people grab a quick bite, but a space where everyone lives out his role.

By the window sits a young writer. Before him, coffee, a notebook, and a procession of faces. He catches gestures, intonations, and pauses, as if trying to understand what story governs each passer-by. This is the France of observers and thinkers.

At the neighbouring table, two people are arguing about politics. Loudly, passionately, interrupting each other. But in this argument there’s no desire to win, only the desire to test thought for strength. Argument here doesn’t destroy connection but creates it.

A little further on, a woman of about fifty orders a plate of cheese. She examines it as if there were a painting before her. No haste, no fuss. Each piece is a small ceremony. The French ability to make even the mundane beautiful.

In the corner, a man in a suit reads a newspaper. He’s alone, and there’s no drama in this. The French know how to be alone with themselves without turning solitude into a problem.

Nearby there’s a company of friends. Noisy, lively, emotional. Everyone speaks simultaneously, and yet everyone hears each other. This is a French community: freedom within connection.

In the street, a small demonstration passes. Someone from amongst the patrons goes out to look; someone waves a hand and returns to coffee. Resistance here isn’t a system failure but part of the rhythm.

And finally — the café owner. He moves slowly, attentively. He doesn’t bustle, doesn’t fawn, and doesn’t hurry. He maintains his rhythm and sets it for the space. This is one of the most mature roles: the role of a person living in his own story and not playing someone else’s.

Morning in Lyon

Early morning in Lyon. A man emerges from the bakery with a still-warm baguette. He walks unhurriedly, as if he’s acquired along the way not bread, but the right to exist for today.

He doesn’t rush and doesn’t make excuses for enjoying himself. His movement is both action and sensation. He doesn’t separate the useful and the pleasant. This small morning explains the French approach better than any theories: life begins not with a plan, but with presence.

Late Evening, Nice

An elderly woman sits on a bench by the sea. In her hands she has ice cream. She enjoys it as if the whole world has narrowed to this taste. She smiles at passers-by, nods to children, and watches the waves.

She isn’t doing anything ‘important’. But everything that’s happening is important.

This is wise selfishness: the ability to give oneself small moments in which a person once again feels alive.

Marseille: Two Lives in One

A young woman in Marseille works as a doctor. In the morning she is strict, composed, and rational. Neat gestures, clear speech, responsibility for others’ health.

In the evening she dances tango in the square. Not because she ‘needs to rest’, but because this part of her life is as real as the morning patient appointments.

She doesn’t explain this duality to herself. She simply lives with it. France lives by the same logic: a person contains more than one role.

Paris Under Rain

A rainy evening. A man and woman stand under the awning of a bakery. They argue, laugh, and interrupt each other. Their gestures are sharp, their words emotional.

This isn’t a conflict. This is language. In France, emotion doesn’t destroy connection if it’s honest. Argument here is a form of closeness, not a threat.

Protest and Everyday Life

Saturday. A column of protesters moves along the boulevard. Teachers, nurses, students, pensioners. They walk slowly and confidently.

The protest rally passes by a café. Patrons continue dining. Someone goes out to join for a few minutes, then returns to his table.

Freedom and order, community and individuality here exist side by side without destroying each other. This isn’t anarchy but a culture that knows how to live in several realities at once.

Terrace in Bordeaux

Morning. The terrace of a small café. A family, an elderly woman, two students, a solitary man. The owner greets each equally warmly.