J’ai rencontré Harry à la Fnac. J’étais caissière. En fait on m’a surtout parlé de lui. Il est formidable avec les enfants! Il fait le bonheur des mamans ! Harry les séduit tous et toutes!
« Je n’ai jamais pu faire lire mon fils, mais avec Harry il est devenu vorace »
JK Rowling est pour moi cette magicienne qui a fait défilé des codes barres sous ma douchette et réconcilié des milliers avec la lecture.
Aujourd’hui connue mondialement, Joanne de son prénom nous confie quelques clés du bonheur : l’échec et l’imagination.
L’échec
J’ai longtemps hésité avant de publier, un peu en sourdine, certains articles de ce blog. J’y parle de mes difficultés, mes échecs. J’ai choisi de les publier car je les considère comme des apprentissages et que l’erreur n’est pas de les vivre mais de les ignorer.
JKR parle de ses échecs comme de son meilleur diplôme parce que ça l’a obligée à se débarrasser du superflu.Une réussite ailleurs aurait sûrement laissé Harry sur le quai.
Elle dit :
“Personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a checklist list of acquisition and achievement… life is difficult and complicated and beyond anyone’s total control and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitude “
« le bonheur est dans le fait de savoir que la vie n’est pas une liste d’acquisitions et de performances… la vie est difficile et compliquée et au delà du contrôle de qui que ce soit et l’humilité de savoir ça vous permettra de vivre ses vicissitudes. »
L’imagination
Joanne aborde ensuite l’imagination oul’empathie. Fermé son esprit et son imagination à ce que l’autre vie est se vouer au cauchemar.Elle nous appelle à regarder, utiliser notre empathie et agir. Elle cite Plutarque “What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.” « Ce que nous réalisons intérieurement va changer la réalité extérieure »
Comme j’avais déjà été portée par le discours de Steve Jobs à Stanford en 2005, je remercie JKR pour cette fabuleuse émotion. Une émotion et un partage que je souhaite de tout mon cœur favoriser le 5 juin à Paris lors de Bliss les explorateurs du bonheur.
Joanne conclue avec une citation de Sénèque et ce sera donc aussi ma conclusion:
“As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.”
« La vie est tel un conte: ce qui importe n’est pas sa longueur mais si elle est bonne »
Dr Vaillant used a longitudinal method of research to conduct a great study. He followed 268 students from Harvard to understand how to live well.
I am so grateful for all the people who worked on that study for more than 60 years because it is as good as a good soap opera, only it’s not fantasy and you get to really learn from it.
The analysis is punctuated by a few biographies that make it very lively.
After reading the article I have this feeling of walking on a thread. Before, it was misty and I couldn’t see it. Now that I am experiencing a happy flow, I can feel the power it gives me but also its fragility. Visualizing all those life was like looking at boat captains. Enigmatic, grandiose, free to wreck it boat captains.
o A little anecdote that really made me laugh and says much about happiness:
“Yet, even as he takes pleasure in poking holes in an innocent idealism, Vaillant says his hopeful temperament is best summed up by the story of a father who on Christmas Eve puts into one son’s stocking a fine gold watch, and into another son’s, a pile of horse manure. The next morning, the first boy comes to his father and says glumly, “Dad, I just don’t know what I’ll do with this watch. It’s so fragile. It could break.” The other boy runs to him and says, “Daddy! Daddy! Santa left me a pony, if only I can just find it!”
o And that’s what they have identified as being healthy characteristics:
“The healthiest, or “mature,” adaptations include altruism, humor, anticipation (looking ahead and planning for future discomfort), suppression (a conscious decision to postpone attention to an impulse or conflict, to be addressed in good time), and sublimation (finding outlets for feelings, like putting aggression into sport, or lust into courtship).”
“Employing mature adaptations was one. The others were education, stable marriage, not smoking, not abusing alcohol, some exercise, and healthy weight.”
o About positive and negative emotions:
“In fact, Vaillant went on, positive emotions make us more vulnerable than negative ones. One reason is that they’re future-oriented. Fear and sadness have immediate payoffs—protecting us from attack or attracting resources at times of distress. Gratitude and joy, over time, will yield better health and deeper connections—but in the short term actually put us at risk. That’s because, while negative emotions tend to be insulating, positive emotions expose us to the common elements of rejection and heartbreak.”
Last week, I was with a student and I told her to open her door to all possibilities. I also told her how when possibilities arise she can find answers by finding a peaceful place, visualising options and listening to her emotions. Was it wrong? Is our future simulating system totally floaded?
Dan Gilbert is a psychologist at Harvard University. He is a great speaker and those 21 minutes are packed with humor and revelations. It’s a must see.
Two great quotations from his speech:
“I am the happiest man alive. I have that in me that can convert poverty to riches, adversity to prosperity, and I am more invulnerable than Archilles; Fortune hath not one place to hit me.”
Sir Thomas Browne
“The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another. Avarice over-rates the difference between poverty and riches: ambition, that between a private and a public station: vain-glory, that between obscurity and extensive reputation. The person under the influence of any of those extravagant passions, is not only miserable in his actual situation, but is often disposed to disturb the peace of society, in order to arrive at that which he so foolishly admires. The slightest observation, however, might satisfy him, that, in all the ordinary situations of human life, a well-disposed mind may be equally calm, equally cheerful, and equally contented. Some of those situations may, no doubt, deserve to be preferred to others: but none of them can deserve to be pursued with that passionate ardour which drives us to violate the rules either of prudence or of justice; or to corrupt the future tranquillity of our minds, either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly, or by remorse from the horror of our own injustice.”
Adam Smith
