25/04/2024 – BONUS POST Perspectives

About a month ago I wrote a post on LinkedIn, my fourth ever. It talked to three of the shitty things that happened to me as a professional that cracked my faith, not faith in the religious sense, but my faith in “the system”, how the world works. Motivated by conversations with my much younger friends, who are as naïve as I still feel, but can’t actually be, it generated over 7,000 impressions, many expressions of support. I deleted it this week.

Writing something that speaks to values, requires a moral inventory. Over the last few weeks, I’ve found myself surfacing other incidents, out of nowhere: times when the argument worked, the risk paid off, the mistake didn’t blow up, or the feedback was well-received. Times which could have gone either way and broke in my direction.

I didn’t “deserve” the good outcomes, any more than I “deserved” the bad ones. But, the good ones did not build my faith the way the bad ones broke it. That was wrong. I remember a book I read ages ago, the story of a man who lost his wife and two of three children in a car crash. He spoke about the moment he stopped asking “what did I do to deserve this?” in the negative and became overwhelmed by the recognition of all the gifts, including his lost family, that he had never deserved, but had received. I’ve googled variations on the story to try to get the title, but I don’t think it matters. It is a lesson I have both never forgotten and only just started to understand.

We spend a lot of time in cemeteries (rather obvious seg way!). We both appreciate them as spaces – old growth trees, quiet avenues, shadows and centuries of architecture, formal, personal, loving, architecture. They are about memory and presence. I love the play of life and not-life in city cemeteries: of residential blocks festooned with laundry, bikes on the balconies overlooking the graves; of sunlight and streetlight on glass, stone and leaf; of names - lost, found, hidden and overlooked. And squirrels.

We went to the “celebrity cemetery” on Monday. We found a somber group gazing at Oscar Wilde, respectful, almost mournful. Over with Jim Morrison, they have barriers up to keep people off the grave itself and a variety of trinkets stacked up against them, so odd for a bare-chested man who OD’d over 50 years ago. The Baigneaux cemetery is “our” park. It has fields of war graves and memorials, many for Jewish families, well cared for. The grounds are alive, managed for biodiversity. We walk almost daily through the Montparnasse cemetery, usually along the walled road that cuts through it. We smirk at the sepulcre of “Famille Bastard” that peaks over the wall. We wonder about the horseshoe nailed further down (and spray-painted yellow?). There is also an outsized cross with the word “REGRET” (all caps) facing the gate. It is Catholic ground after all.