It was a spring morning. A day that began by opening the shutters without fear of the cold. And then immediately the soothing and beautiful vision of a cherry tree branch in bloom. To see the tree, you had to bend slightly.
But that morning Allan did not think about it. Because he had spent a night having strange dreams. He had no control over them, and that distressed him. He who had made self-control his credo had to undergo every night a dream life that totally escaped him. Like a movie that he would be forced to watch without being able to stop it or escape.
Allan remembered a book that compared a dream to a movie. The film industry is often referred to as a dream factory. Allan found the idea that somewhere in his subconscious, something over which he had no control was at work disturbing.
Allan thought he had a normal life, a life of complete normality. But his dream life reminded him of the extent to which he was crossed by impulses, desires and animality. Thus for him if the dreams were similar to films, it was only from a purely formal point of view. In fact, dreams often showed him what he did not want to see of himself. In the films it is often the opposite that happens. We see heroes, even superheroes. After a night like the one he had just spent, Allan felt more like an anti-hero. His conclusion: his dreams were about art house movies. Thinking about it, he said to himself that his dreams were more like experimental films.
Allan decided to take a shower. But how was it possible to start a day with this kind of thinking? What is normal anyway? In the end, real superheroes are not the ones you think they are. It is not often enough said how much courage, perseverance - even self-sacrifice - or genius it takes to live a normal life. Getting up in the morning, for example. Allan found it very unpleasant to have to obey a plastic box that beeped louder and louder and faster and faster. In fact, Allan was always awake before his alarm clock started ringing. Then he had to get in his car, go to work, follow the same rhythm every day and come back at night. No, really, you had to be a superhero to live like that.
Fortunately Allan was off today. Last week he had dared to say at the coffee break that he was against 5G. Now he was called the Quaker. How hard it is to live among normal people!
Allan had decided to forgive himself for not being like everyone else, for not having a smartphone, for not having a social network. In the modern world, not being on a social network makes you a digital hermit. He wondered if he had really taken the time to look at his cherry tree in bloom. Maybe he should start by learning to look again, to accept to be himself, neither normal nor superhero. For being himself is to start by stopping comparing himself to others.
Allan was glad he thought of that. He liked the warm rain of the shower for that. Because often good ideas were germinating in him. And this morning, he told himself that he had to stop thinking. That was what he had to do: accept to be close to the void, to the abyss and to the trees.
He had searched for answers, read a lot. But the more he had tried to understand, the more the truth had become distant, like a mirage. And this morning the truth appeared to him. It was there, in front of him. It had always been there, like this branch of a cherry tree in flower.
In the afternoon he went for a walk with a friend. On the way back, as they got closer to the house, his friend said to him:
- What do you want Allan, it is to understand nothing!
Allan stopped his friend and pointed to the cherry tree. The wind gently lifted the branches. A cloud of flowers took flight and exploded into a myriad of stars. Without looking away, Allan replied with a smile:
- You are right my friend, there is nothing to understand.
