What kind of day ?

These days, things are shaking up quite a bit on my end — and there are moments, never very long but still real, where I lose my footing.

A few years ago, I felt like a kite drifting with the wind.I let myself be carried by whatever came my way, most of it suggested by my partners or my parents. I didn’t need to take initiative, to start projects, or at least I didn’t feel the need to go further than the plan on paper — because sooner or later, someone close to me would invite me into an experience. I was far, very far, from realizing that I was capable of creating my own and taking others along for the ride.

In compensation, I would spend hours immersed in other worlds — worlds that seemed far more desirable than mine. The desire to create my life was there, but postponed. I had no vital spark and no model to follow, and no one was explicitly expecting me to step out of my comfort zone to be.

The only time I clearly remember is when my mother pushed me to ride a bike without training wheels. We were in the forest near home, on a quiet paved road. I wasn’t confident, and she pretended to hold the seat behind me so that I would start pedaling. After thirty meters, I heard her voice far too distant to still be holding me. I turned my head — and to my horror, realized I’d been on my own all along. Fear turned to anger — betrayal! — then to surprise: I had made it that far by myself without realizing it. She was smiling from ear to ear.

Aside from that, my parents, as far as I remember, didn’t really encourage me to leave my world to conquer others. I already had immense curiosity, storing infinite details about countless things they couldn’t care less about. They accepted me as I was — and for that I have endless gratitude.They were active, fully engaged in their own lives, but I didn’t know how to bridge my contemplative world with theirs, more embodied. I kept that for “later”... and later became years — until life threw obstacles in my way and forced me to act.

That’s how it always goes: either I perceive the places where I’ll need to step into the unknown and go willingly, or I’m pushed to the edge of the cliff until, with no other choice, I start flapping my wings not to crash into the ocean below.

I spent the first part of my life surrounded by the familiar — things my body knew. Yet deep inside, I longed to leave and discover something else, because what I had felt too harsh for what it offered.Little by little, I watched others transform — far beyond what we believed possible. (I suppose that’s what growing up means.)Our shared culture didn’t value deep conversations about such things back then, and I felt lost — hiding it behind my intellectual ego.

It’s summer during my second year at the architecture school in Belleville.Arnaud*, my mother’s partner, she and I are sitting at a restaurant.I’m explaining that I can’t really see myself becoming an architect under the current conditions: endless hours, partly unpaid, huge legal responsibilities — all to produce ugly buildings for the profit of real-estate developers.

He’s a pragmatic man.“So you’re quitting school then? What are you going to work in?”

Caught off guard. I’ve lived entirely in theory since high school (I’d done three years of literary prep by then).He, on the other hand, has worked since age thirteen — starting as an apprentice in a garage, sweeping floors until he told his boss: “Either you teach me mechanics, or I’m leaving.” He once had his own business, which didn’t survive the 2008 crisis, and now runs the service department of a major dealership.For him, studying without knowing what you’ll do with it is a complete waste of time.For me, it was a way of avoiding reality until something external would magically wake me up.

That conversation lit the fire that made me say:“Stop. No more pretending. We’re going to the edge — and we’ll flap our wings. It’s terrifying, but I see clearly that everyone I admire for their success had to go through that damn cliff.”

Ten years later, I’m at this café table, writing this article about the meaning of sleepless, anxious nights.It took a decade of diving into the unknown to feel in my gut that peace sits on the other side of fear.Theoretical knowledge helps to project yourself forward, but it has no equivalence to lived experience.It takes time — always more than we’d like, yet less than we fear.

I literally had to cross an ocean several times, swallow a fair amount of entheogenic plants and throw them back up along with my fears, confront my limits, weaknesses, and shame through a love relationship of unimaginable depth, take leaps of faith not knowing whether they’d work or fail, bet everything on what felt right even when my cautious part screamed otherwise, bare myself repeatedly before humans far more experienced than me... to feel in my body what transformation really means.

It takes time — questioning everything down to the root, acting on it, then diving again.

When I say I lose my footing, it means I’m going through an emotional wave and the thoughts that come with it — and my system doesn’t know when things will return to normal.Spoiler: they always do.But there are moments when you can’t see the end of the tunnel — because there’s a bend in the middle.

That’s my new sport: taking turns inside tunnels.

Example: you go to bed too late after a slightly stressful movie that helped you compensate for a dull day. You wake up in the middle of the night, and anxiety hits full force.A part of you starts listing everything that’s wrong with your life, every little inconsistency.The wave grows, and you think, “What the hell am I doing here?”Two or three voices start talking at once:

— You should be sleeping!

— Why are we still in Paris? You know this city isn’t good for us

— We need calm, trees, and smiles. Get us out of here!

— How come you’re 35 and tick none of the boxes of a “normal” life at this age?!

If you know this feeling, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

To get out of the tunnel, you have to awaken another part — the one that can rise above, stop the chatter for a second, and remember:you’re lying in a comfortable bed, in a comfortable house, and even if life isn’t all rosy right now, nothing is vital. You’re actually exactly where you once projected yourself to be.Reassuring, isn’t it?You’re just in a tunnel; the GPS lost signal; you’ll have to adjust the fear gauge to see clearly again.

Ten years ago, I would have spent the whole night overthinking, the whole next day too, until I’d decide to change something drastic in my life.Sure, I could drop everything, run away, and trade today’s challenges for new ones somewhere else.Except I’d still end up meeting the same ones again.When I fled the relationship I couldn’t end — and my family tensions — by going to Brazil eleven years ago, I found them all waiting for me when I came back.

Let’s be clear: to me, there’s no wrong path, and no such thing as wasting time.We’re always exactly where we’re capable of being, with the challenges we can handle.

One of my existential goals is to experience everything a human being can possibly live through.To build resilience, depth, and nervous system capacity to feel the entire spectrum of life — from cosmic emptiness to overflowing intensity.

Every friction is an opportunity for liberation, for transformation that leaves me more sovereign, less reactive, more whole.

So my current sport is this: to be traversed by fear, anxiety, and pain — to face them, breathe through them, become familiar with them — until crossing tunnels no longer blocks me.

There are kicks in the ass, strokes of genius, epiphanies — and then life settles back into its usual rhythm…until you realize no miracle formula will do the work for you.It’s a practice.An infinite iteration until, without noticing, you’ve changed your structure.

To dare to move forward without a map.

It’s been only a few decades since humans mapped their whole planet — and maybe that’s why we’ve unconsciously come to believe that everything’s already been said. That illusion fogs our perception.

Look inward.There’s a universe to explore, a thousand adventures to live, and just as many versions of yourself to experience.

And you — when you wake up anxious, what kind of day do you want to offer yourself?