To be French

I am in a state of shock and I am not distressed.

I am in sad and I am determined.

I am deafened and I cannot be silent.

A nagging question inhabits me because I am getting older and because I have not received any answers from pundits in search of fame, media in search of an audience, and politicians in search of legitimacy. This question came back on Friday, even more obsessing and obvious: what does it mean to be French?

My Frenchness has always been obvious to me.

Both my grandfathers were in the military. Both my parents were from old Breton families (and by essence catholic). And I studied in these typical French schools, right in the middle of Paris.

I have never stopped discovering this Frenchness since the age of six when my mother decided to teach me French history. And I have never stopped questioning this complex, polymorph, and so rich history. Something became very clear: France and its history belong to no one by nature, only to the ones who want to own them, and think about them with energy and circumspection. 

As I am writing I would love to finish this sentence that would start by: “France is…”

But my goal here is not to list these men, these women, these places, these writers, these musicians, these painters, these events that made France famous and that belong to my France. I do not want to force anyone to think that I have all the answers. I have a single and modest ambition, just to push the people who are reading these lines to look for and to express what France represents and why they feel attached to this country.

It is about time that each one of us, French citizens but also Francophiles, asks ourselves what France is, what France means to us; this France that we love, that France we like a bit less, this country where we want to live or that a few want to leave.

A word has nearly disappeared from the French dictionary, the word concord.

I am not writing about this big square in the middle of Paris where no one stops except some tourists who want to take pictures of the Champs-Elysées and the Louvre gardens.

Maybe it is time for concord to be back in our daily conversations; these times, during which we listen to each other, during which everyone’s voice becomes a matter of attention. Concord is not about unanimity, consensus but about this state of mind that pushes us to listen, to understand, to accept that our different points of view are also the base of this nation that has always balanced between a dreamt unity and real rifts. Like in many countries, our history is a long series of shortcuts, massacres, divisions that sometimes feel like badly stitched wounds

We are at war but we live in a time of peace. We tend to forget to which extent our epoch is unique: for the first time in ages a generation will die without directly facing war. Before the disappearance of our parents, of our grandparents, we have a rare opportunity to ask them questions, to ask ourselves questions when conflicts do not play this role of demographic regulator and national unifier anymore.

Days, weeks after the attacks on Charlie Hebdo looked at first like a unique opportunity and then like a missed occasion. The emotion was as flimsy as the crowd was impressive on January 11th 2015. After that Sunday like no other, every one of us went back to her or his life. But how many of us took the time to wonder what our prospect as a national community meant, what our ambition –not the one that we delegate to politicians- was when it comes to move forward together because we share the same history, the same language, often the same desires, on the same territory and above all because we do not have any other choice? This nation, our nation is at the same time an opportunity and a fatality.

These days -when our daily lives meet with history- offer us unique occasions to share and to exchange. Human beings are part of this rare breed that possesses this ability to comfort each other when tragedy strikes.

Today like yesterday, Paris looks like a mourning city and we cry thinking of our loved ones, of these people we did not know and that we could have known. When we stop weeping, we express remorse and regrets. We start realizing that nothing will be the same without really knowing where we are heading.

These sad days are days of thoughts and self-reflection, hours and days when we need to start asking ourselves what to be French means, what we can do together, what these monsters tried to destroy when in reality their bullets barely touched us.

Today, all of us, the ones who are still alive, we can do as one, as a group what we postponed so many times. We can try to do what we failed to achieve. We can celebrate what makes us so strong as individuals and as a nation.

We are 66 million minus 132, proud, standing, with a few tears in our eyes; 66 million minus 132 that will not yield because these barbarians have forced us to look at what cannot lose, at what we cannot leave behind.

These mindless idiots tried to destroy our national symbols and they just pushed us to embrace with more passion than before our restaurants, our cafés, our national stadium, all these places where we love to have fun and meet.

We cannot forget that France is a bataclan*, an inconvenient equipment, a history with a lot of misses, a group of cousins we could live without or a bunch unpleasant neighbors. But France is also a joyful mess, this art of doing nothing -strictly nothing!-, this urge to be together, this desire to party just for the pleasure of partying, this unparalleled science of tardiness, this unique talent for complaining for no reason, this idea that nothing is more than important than friendship, this talent for making conversations last because we want to be with our friends forever and we do not know how to say so.

Since Friday, my friends who are also parents have told me about this urge, this need to take their kids in their arms and to tell them how much they are essential to them.

Today, I look at my country as if I were visiting a friend in the hospital, a friend to whom I would like to say a hundred times, a thousand times how much I love her, how much I love him because I forgot so many times to say so. I felt I would sound stupid or I thought I needed to remain discreet.

France, our France, is our mother, our sister, our daughter, and our friend lying on her hospital bed. Today, we are holding her hand, too softly, too strongly, to show her affection; this affection we had not been able to express for such a long time.

So, when the enemy –the enemy of our values, of what we stand for- tried to kill us, we began realizing who we are. We are more than a mere population, more than a territory, more than men, more than women, more than a language, more than our history. We are an intention. We are a desire. We are a will.

I moved back to France in August 2014 after spending ten years in the United States living there as a foreigner, the guy who comes from somewhere else in the world, from the other side of the Atlantic ocean, with his accent, his limited vocabulary, his peculiar manners, even if far from so many legends and horror stories, so many Americans, friends or strangers, looked at me with gracious benevolence or kind curiosity. So, in Swan Valley, ID (200 inhabitants), an evening of July 2014, I met a guy in a bar, who had started drinking before me and who told me after another glass of beer that his favorite writer in the world was Alexis de Tocqueville.

It took me less than one second to fall in love with Paris again, this city that is at the same time the part and the whole, a part of France and France all by itself. Sometimes I am surprised when I listen to my friends share this same magnetic fascination that they are not able to express. Then, on a larger scale, I wonder what keeps us from telling what brings us together, what draws us closer, and what we can offer to the world.

Today, more than ever, my place is here with my fellow citizens, with these tourists, visitors, or migrants gazing at this beauty and history that we inherited and are protecting but that we will need to invent and build again. I am also thinking about these new chapters that we will write together yelling at each other, admiring each other, accepting each other while being sure that we are united by these three words liberté, égalité, and fraternité.

Vive la France!

*Bataclan is an old French word meaning inconvenient equipment.

Note: this text is a rough translation from the “Etre fran?ais” originally written in French and published on November 16th on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Medium.