He could also hit my cousin, because he did not know how to conjugate Latin verbs well, he did not distinguish between his children and those of others. If I say this, to the chagrin of my mother who would have liked us to purely and simply erase this dark side of her boyfriend, it is obviously not to praise him. I want to write about it sometime but not now.

Now, I just want to point out that at the dawn of his fifty years, it stopped. At once. I received my last round trip when I was 23 (it still marks) because I didn’t want to make conversation at breakfast, then nothing. People who knew him afterwards could never believe that he could have been violent. He was another man. He became an excellent friend of my brother, even if for his part my brother never confided in him to the end, the past having left a very deep mark.

Me, I’m the super late type when it comes to personal development. To say, I was anorexic for more than twenty years, while the average age must be around 14/16. By this I mean that I am not a standard model, but I have my experience and I share it. I think I can say that I was not an “adult”, in the sense of taking responsibility, remaining for a very long time between a mental age of 5 years (5 and a half years, according to my mother, precisely) and an adolescence which started late but spanned several decades. From the academic point of view, not too much trouble, in the sense that I learned what it took to continue without being jostled or almost, but with very average report cards. From a social point of view, really very very backward everywhere. I’ll spare you the details.
Why am I saying all this? Because at the dawn of my sixty years (ten years behind even compared to my father, who was not an arrow in the field either) I think that I can be granted that I have changed . What happened in my life?

I had, like many people of my generation, a life preserved from unemployment and worry about finding a job, a “career” without gaps, and I changed profession around 40: 18 years old researcher in more or less theoretical physics, 18 years old schoolteacher. At 60, I stopped working “outside” and I had time to… I don’t know what to do. Maybe look in the rear view mirror, maybe listen to what other people have always been telling me, maybe open my head again and let go (just a little bit). The little it took to realize that I could function differently. I remained the person before, the same “Entity”, but something in the cogs really changed, I put a little oil maybe, or a little smile, I dare not say “lightness”. I am, as I have already written, not at all but then not at all a standard model, nor a model at all, but experience tells me that what happens to me, in general, also happens to others . This change of profession (we can talk about it another time if you’re interested) in the middle of a working lifetime, for example, is classic for a lot of people. Looking for yourself in adolescence, too, is commonplace (even if it lasted longer for me than for others). I have the idea that this transfer that changed the external approach of my dad and mine also happens to others, at varying ages. Well, some don’t need it, they have been doing this work on themselves since the dawn of time. For the “slow” like me, it took a click, or a mental availability that was not there “before” and was there “after”. There are contingent factors that left a small door open, but I don’t think that’s the main thing.

For me, the demonstration of January 11, 2015 was a click, that’s for sure. If I have to put my finger on something, I would say: the certainty that the human being is essentially good and that he can remain the altruist he is at birth comes from this incredible demonstration. It wasn’t my first demonstration, huh. I was born in 1956, I was already on the streets at 14/15 years old. But a protest like that, I’ve never seen one. It almost looked like a party, when we were faced with absolute horror.

Following this demonstration, I moved. I went elsewhere. And what I saw struck me. I didn’t “wanted” to change, but the facts are there (I believe). I no longer react as before. Not that my excessive requirements have disappeared, no no. But I know how to “see” that my reaction is not correct, I know how to reposition myself if I go astray, I know how to stop and analyze my behavior. When I say “I know”, it’s a bit wrong, of course: I should rather say “I’m learning to”. But I’m on the way (next article), that’s already it, I think. The “non-standard model” person that I am may have skipped the step

“adult” to position themselves directly in the “old” stage? I do not know. It’s less comfortable than the self-assured attitude of the teenager I was until the day before yesterday, I’m inhabited by doubt now, but I like what I’ve become (ok: in the process of become, if you prefer).

So is it a birth? a rebirth? a turnaround? fear of dying? a weariness of always remaining the honest one who does not move an inch, the preventer from going around in circles? I do not know. I know that I am on the way (next article, therefore), and that being there is fine with me.
Am I the only one in this case? Don’t hesitate to share your point of view!