For a few days, I have been living in Paris. It’s a strange season to arrive in a city that so many people already seem in a hurry to leave. Yesterday, in Montparnasse, I found myself looking at the travelers more than the trains. A little girl was dragging a suitcase as big as herself. His father kept repeating to him, a little out of breath: “Hurry up, we’re going to miss him!” » Around them, we counted the bags, we checked the tickets, we consulted the screens, we ran from one platform to the other. Everyone seemed to be leaving to find some rest. As if rest were a destination, a place where we could finally arrive.
Vacations require real skills. Book early. Compare long. Always optimize. Leaving can now be learned. You still have to have the possibility. Secours populaire reminds that one in three children will not leave their home this summer. For many families, a few days away from home is already a victory. The simple fact of being away from your daily life has become a privilege.
The feeling that something must be produced
And for those who succeed, another test begins: they will have to “enjoy”. The word is everywhere. To those who leave, we almost all say the same thing: “Enjoy! » We no longer just take vacations, we must make the most of them. The verb is not innocent. “Profit” means to take advantage, to make profitable. As if time itself should be useful and beneficial. Even our leisure time has learned the language of performance. Even rest is required to produce something.
In our desire to enjoy everything, we may forget a simpler question: what exactly moves when we leave? Because traveling does not always mean moving. You can cross an entire continent without leaving the center of yourself. We can go far away while carrying with us the same worries, the same fear of not being good enough. We can change landscape without changing our outlook.
Maybe we’re asking too much from the holidays. We no longer just ask them for a trip. We ask them for a transformation. But if they can move bodies, nothing says that they can also move our lives. Because the fatigue that overwhelms us is deeper than that which a nap or a few weeks of leave are enough to repair. It comes from this impression that we must continually produce something: results, a self-image, proof of success, sometimes even memories.
The essential cannot be conquered
We learned to produce. Have we unlearned how to receive? Receiving a landscape without immediately wanting to photograph it. Receiving a meeting without calculating what it will bring us. Receive a day without trying to fill it until the last moment. Receive your own life other than as a project to succeed.
The Gospel also uses this word that we think we know: rest. But when Jesus promises rest, he is speaking to men and women who are toiling under the weight of a yoke, not under the weight of their suitcases. It is aimed at those who think they have to carry everything alone. The Gospel of rest announced by Jesus is not an escape. It moves what, in us, believes that everything must be earned, deserved, produced.
“Come to me, all you who labor under heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. » (Mt 11:28). Perhaps this is true movement, true rest? Discover that everything does not depend on us. That the essential cannot be conquered. Let him receive himself.
A few more weeks and the quays of Montparnasse will tell the opposite story. The trains will return to Paris. The suitcases will find the cupboards. September will take over. We will be back. Some may have taken advantage of their vacation. But rest was not at the end of the journey. He was already there, in that which cannot be conquered but is received.
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