A dream come true...

When I was younger, there was a sort of catchphrase that the teachers were throwing around, yet you felt they believed there was some truth in it, even if for them it was what seemed to be a somewhat bitter truth.

"In life, in order to be happy, 

you have to find of line of work 

that will correspond to your passion... 

That way, 

you will never have the feeling 

that you are working: 

only living."

That made me feel rather discomfited for my passion was either reading, or it was not existent. I brushed those thoughts away, and found myself struggling through my teenage years to find a passion, any passion, while it seemed to constantly elude me. I felt passionless, and I felt terrible about it. I convinced myself that I was bland, unfocused, and unable of true interest. I folded on myself, I withdrew from a foreign world. But I kept on reading...

But where could reading lead me? Every computer test (oh, in those days, so simple, yet so difficult to forget) was drawing me toward literature, but what future there? I dismissed those as chimeras. And I kept on reading, looking for a passion. Sciences, Politics and International Relations, History, Literature, Linguistics, Theatre, Cinema, Visual Arts, Philosophy - it was an orgy of knowledge and I drank every drop of it... yet I didn't find that all-consuming passion.

Then I started teaching, and it all came together. My passion didn't come from any of those disciplines, rather it was tightly tied to the very act of learning. The pleasure of discovery, the hardship of understanding, the pain of seeing a text remaining opaque, all of it drove me forward. And now, thinking about what I can pass on to my students, reading their often surprising work, exploring uncharted territories of culture that always fascinated me, hoping they will in turn fascinate them, I keep on reading...

I finally have found my passion. It was there all along, that's for sure. I just wasn't looking properly. It takes a while to get to know yourself, your pleasures, and your pains. Finding a place where I feel I can bloom is quite an unexpected feeling. Now that I think of it, I probably never have worked so hard before in my life, and they were right... It doesn't feel like working: it feels like living. And that's such a great thing to be able to say:

I am alive.
And I love my life.