The perfect Clash

Conversations as treasures

Dear readers, thank you so much for being here. Today’s tale is about the transformative power of conversations and chasing surprise as a source of power. I hope you like it and if you do, please forward it to your loved ones!

Here is where to further discover my work:

• My podcast and book “The rules of the Game” about being a woman at work.

• My podcast about how to invest one’s savings “The Starter Pack” (Fra)

• Follow me / get in touch on Linkedin or Instagram.

At the beginning of the year, I spent three days in a monastry. I do that sometimes to cut the noise. It may not the most entertaining experience - in that case you had to be ok with high and thick grey walls, heavy wooden doors, gloomy landscapes all around (also there was a storm that weekend that made the scenery absolutely miserable), spending all your meals alone in a big empty room except for a table and a chair listening to a recording of Ste Teresa’s life BUT it’s always transformative in the best possible way, and this time was no exception. I don’t usually have a specific reason to go but I like to sit with the prioress because I believe in listening to alien point of views to enlighten my own path. And so here we were, sitting on stiff little wooden chairs, chating about life and purpose when she leaned forward and said : “ But this is so easy, one just needs to go after love and desire”.

Detail of the new stained glass windows of Notre Dame by Claire Tabouret.

Let’s take a minute to picture it please: you are in an almost empty, cold, austere as can be decorum, with a mean winter wind screaming at you from outside and you sit accross a 50 year old nun, brown undefined silhouette who holds herself with humility and restrain, covers her hands with her sleeves and does not look at you in the eye, ponders every words she says, nods most of the time (still feels a lot because you haven’t spoken to anyone in days) and then suddently tells you about desire, how it should be every one’s northern star and how people should stop inventing rules around it. I mean…

The advice itself is wonderful, but it’s the clash that completely took me away. The perfect clash between what I expected and what was said, between what I thought of her, and her. That moment where what I see does not match at all what I hear and where all the beautifully woven truths in my brain get burnt.

I love clashes, I look for them, the bliss to be surprised and the delight to be taken off guard. I love them because in that brief moment of stupor, you crack open, the light gets in, and then leaves you enriched and more powerful than ever.

Conversations have a transformative power. You never know when or who is going to take you to unsuspected directions, shake your certainties or turn your world upside down. Conversations hold the power to change you, reshape you, make you take decisions, make you change your mind.

Treat conversations like treasures, like a pearl hunter, chase the clash, rare and precious, take them seriously and dive in leaving your prejudices at the surface because they come in all shapes and forms and in a moment of grace you might experience a second where clothes, gestures and voices dissolve and all that remains is that presence, and yours, a new take on things and a true source of power - if you’re lucky in the shape of a nun sharing her wisdom from under her scapular.

Now on your saddle, and off you go!

Clara

Enjoy it here in French!