Below the Waterline
Here is how, today, I picture part of the chaos we are going through. A multitude of tiny things, often invisible or so habitual that we no longer notice them, are at work below the waterline.
Here is how, today, I picture part of the chaos we are going through.
A multitude of tiny things, often invisible or so habitual that we no longer notice them, are at work below the waterline.
They show up in daily life, notably through repetition, in our gestures, our relationships, our decisions, our organisations, our systems. And, added together, they also contribute to what we see emerging at the surface.
I did not build this iceberg as a theoretical model.
It is rather the result of a long path of reconciliation with myself, with certain parts of my story and that of my ancestors, with life and, perhaps also, with death.
I began pulling threads in things that were sometimes tiny.
One day, for example, I noticed that when I went to a restaurant with someone, I almost always had the reflex to offer to pay.
Why?
I had no idea.
The following times, I began to see the movement coming. Then another question came to me:
Do I really want to?
Sometimes yes.
But not always.
And I eventually sensed that not offering to pay could make me uncomfortable. As if I owed something, for no objective reason.
I pulled on that little thread. It led me much further than I would have imagined.
Seeing was not enough
In other situations, I could see certain patterns repeating very clearly, without managing to break free of them.
Under pressure or under emotion, I could overadapt, accept for a long time what did not suit me, then swing the other way and become sharp.
Seeing was not enough to set me free.
What began to change something was not one more understanding.
It was much simpler:
slow down, breathe, feel.
Create enough space to hear what truly came from me.
And sometimes, to my own surprise:
I don't know.
I don't know what I really want.
I don't know what truly brings me joy.
But at least I was beginning to feel that certain familiar answers from my past no longer suited me.
The Invisible Pact
By pulling on some of these threads, I found myself much further than I would ever have imagined.
Some belonged to my personal history. Others showed up in my relationships, in organisations, in wider systems.
Sequoia, that entrepreneurial adventure begun by three of us, born of an intuition and then of a very strong inner conviction — almost a calling — became an enormous revealer of them.
As the company grew, systems also appeared: ways of deciding, power relations, interests, rules, expectations, loyalties.
And I gradually felt more and more constrained within some of those systems.
I felt it physically: like an enormous weight stuck in my throat and upper chest. A short, high breath, prevented from going all the way. And like a hindrance to the spontaneous movements of my body.
What was playing out around me also resonated with what was playing out within me: my beliefs, my conditioning, my loyalties, my own coping mechanisms.
Then, at some point, I felt a new calling.
This time, it urged me to look towards my family heritage.
I did not yet know exactly what I would be looking for there, or what I would find.
But quite quickly, a name came to me:
The Invisible Pact.
Little by little, certain threads began to appear differently. Stories, repetitions, legacies that seemed to have begun long before me and yet still resonated in the present.
Not as a single explanation.
Rather as an additional depth of the iceberg.
But today, it is no longer only that face of the invisible that interests me.
And beneath the chaos?
I am convinced that there is also, in many human beings, good and beauty still beneath the surface.
Scattered.
Sometimes hard to perceive.
Intuitions. Impulses. Gestures. Encounters. Ideas. Different ways of creating, of deciding, of connecting with one another.
Tiny seeds that have not yet sprouted.
Perhaps it is not about manufacturing all of that.
Perhaps it is also about creating enough space for what already exists to emerge.
I don't know what it will produce. And I feel less and less need to know in advance.
Perhaps this, too, is finding our rightful place. No longer offering to pay out of reflex. Waiting to know whether I really want to.