I look at the letter and I can’t believe what I read. I am being told, for the first time in my life, that I will be murdered if I don’t leave my newly acquired home. It sounds eerie. I don’t have the habit to receive this kind of writings and I don’t know how to react. I have recently moved here in this new place, in what I thought to be the paradise: beautiful beaches, sunlight, mountains, the sea… But foreigners, having completely different values from the ones of my own, are kicking me out. And they are simply notifying me of my projected assassination without any remorse or shame. The game has become “too real”. I feel the fear and, at the same time, I feel the anger: how dare they threaten me in my own home and in my own land?!

I have a taste for adventure. I came here more or less as an explorer, seeking to broaden my horizons. I left “what was known” and sailed my ship to an exotic place. I thought we are “on the same page”. But now, looking at the written message and beginning already to hear some outlandish languages nearby, I feel vulnerable. The survival instinct beats the anger and joins my fears. There isn’t too much to ponder on; the decision is obvious:

– I cannot stay here anymore. Danger is everywhere but if there’s going to be a fight, I have better chances to fight it “in my old home”. This is a place I must leave. I will head back to my ancestors’ home, to the house of my childhood. It’s not going to be nice but there I have better chances to face this invasion. If I stay here any longer, I will lose; I will certainly get killed.

I wake up from the dream much confused. I never had such an unsettling dream; this is completely new. I still feel the danger, the menace. It is visceral. The Mediterranean sky meets my eyes. It is blue and reflects into the water, giving its azure nuance. Everything is disturbingly beautiful…

Carl Jung says that “the pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong”. There are moments when everything seems to have a meaning, a structure, some sort of coherence. You do this and you go there because “it is necessary” for the future, a future that is constructed piece by piece, one thing leading to another and then another and so on. Therefore, a narrative can be easily discerned and… this creates meaning, a sense, a purpose for everything we do or experience. And this gives comfort; we know that life is “predictable”, that everything we do… makes sense.

But then the pendulum of life enters in the nonsense area. Things get disconnected. There is no consistency. There is nothing to be understood. Everything is scattered. Viktor Frankl encountered this situation when he pointed out that “ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked”. In other words, when life is in its nonsense phase, we are called to generate meaning, that is, we must artificially connect the dots so as to create a narrative even if there isn’t actually any. This is fallacious from the viewpoint of logical thinking because it’s a distortion of reality that is “forced” to fit a narrative that can provide meaning and finally ease our anxieties versus a completely uncontrollable and unpredictable and viciously meaningless life, but most people of a certain structure prefer to do this as a defensive mechanism so as to keep going through life, shelter themselves from the void and still remain effective.

I belong to this type of people. When everything makes sense, I’m okay. When nothing makes sense, I create meaning myself. And when everything is so chaotic that nothing can be understood, I keep going until everything returns to meaning and the narrative reveals itself. But I am fully aware that it might not be an underlying narrative at all, that everything is purely random, that I make up a story so as to be able to bear the incertitude of both God’s and afterlife’s existence. It is truly a leap of faith…

I started the year in Alsace. I was on the Cote d’Azur for roughly half a year. It was a nightmare in heaven. It was also a challenging time at the personal level for several different reasons. I am disillusioned and hurt. I just run away from that place. Take it how you want but it was a matter of life and death to escape from there. I was lucky, very lucky. Quoting again Jung, “it seems to me that I have been carried along”. I was never in my life so much traumatized and I am still recovering because I got physically sick. The dream I dreamed some time ago was a warning that only now can I understand. This finally makes sense, as my inner-mind knows things I am not still aware of and acts like a good partner & counselor worth listening to. But finding meaning in what the Southern France meant for me will take time. For the moment I am happy to be back “home”, a bit far yet close to where I started the year. And hoping that the pendulum of life will return once again to the area where everything makes sense…