The Mirror Ball

We may all be mirror balls.

You know, those silvery balls that turn slowly and cast flashes of light in every direction.

Depending on the light that shines on them, their movement, the angle from which we look at them, some facets sparkle while others remain in shadow.

Two people looking at the same ball do not necessarily see the same reflections.

And yet it is always the same ball.

This image came to me as I returned to a question that has accompanied me for a long time:

Who are we behind what we do?

Scattered or multiple?

I have always liked doing several things at once.

When I was young, I played different sports. I could probably have become better at a single discipline by devoting myself to it entirely.

But why should I have had to choose?

I loved golf, tennis, hockey. Each gave me something different.

Later, I kept exploring fields sometimes very far from one another.

We readily call that scattering.

But it is often performance, specialisation, profitability or the coherence of a career that decide this. Not the person themselves.

We tend to admire legible paths, those that tell of a logical progression, an ever-stronger expertise, an ever-better-defined identity.

But must a life necessarily look like a straight line?

One experience can nourish another without any immediately visible link between them.

An exploration can be thrilling without becoming a profitable activity.

A project may not succeed and still have enriched the person who undertook it.

Diversity is not necessarily scattering.

And a mirror ball does not become more coherent when you remove all its facets but one.

When doing leaves room

I grew up with a strong valuing of action.

Undertaking, moving forward, surpassing oneself, never standing still.

I developed this energy of movement, initiative, achievement. An energy I readily associate with yang.

But for a long time I have also wondered about the balance with yin, these two complementary movements that each of us can recognise within.

What happens when action takes up all the space?

When even our encounters become projects to develop?

Today I am exploring another kind of power: that of receptivity.

Not passivity.

Availability.

Listening without trying to solve. Letting an idea ripen. Letting oneself be surprised.

And what if, for once, we had nothing to obtain from an encounter?

Meeting someone simply because that person intrigues us, without knowing what might come of it. A conversation, a friendship, a complicity, an unexpected collaboration.

Or nothing in particular.

I like working as a team. I like collective creation, ideas that circulate, energies that answer one another.

But I no longer want to take my place in a project simply because a role matches my former skills.

And if nothing comes of it, it takes nothing away from the encounter.

What we show. What we hide.

Let us come back to our mirror ball.

One person knows me as an entrepreneur. Another as a mother. Another as a creator.

Some discover my humour. Others my sensitivity, my boldness or my contradictions.

Each perceives a few reflections.

And I myself probably do not know all the facets that make me up.

Some have perhaps never been lit.

Others will appear in contact with people I have not yet met.

Others will transform with time.

There is not necessarily a "true self" hidden behind a "false self". Our roles, our skills, our achievements are part of our story. None of them sums us up.

And when we identify too strongly with what we do, we may end up hiding, even from ourselves, everything that does not find its place in that definition.

So, what do we hide behind our identities?

Perhaps desires we have not yet dared to follow.

Talents no one has had the chance to discover. Parts of ourselves that simply have no particular usefulness.

Or possibilities we do not yet know.

I have no definitive answer to the question "Who am I?"

And I have no wish to replace my former identities with a new definition, however seductive.

That would be one more Velcro.

I simply want to let my mirror ball turn.

To stop constantly steering the light to show others the reflections they expect.

To no longer have to be perfectly legible.

To no longer have to prove my worth to justify my presence.

Just to be there.

With all my facets, visible or invisible, known or still unknown.

And let the light circulate.