Pick-Up 069: And There Was Light...
is the title of a book I enjoyed reading recently and thought worthy of sharing with you. It depicts the first 20 years of the french resistance member Jacques Lusseyran.
The subtitle is “The Extraordinary Memoir of a Blind Hero of the French Resistance in World War II “. I would say that it is indeed an extraordinary memoir of someone who had an extraordinary perception of life.
I heard about the book from Sheikh Hamza Yusuf in an interview he did with Dr. Jordan Peterson in the JBP Podcast; a wholesome episode by the way that I’ve watched over and over since it came out and I highly recommend you check it out.
As I planned to read it, I thought, wait a minute, the guy’s French so probably the original text is not in English.
I read it in French. Jacques’s style made me fall in love with this Romance language all over again. I found myself highlighting whole paragraphs as they often formed this indivisible unit of an idea so beautifully expressed. I know that I often say of books I recommend how they’re beautifully written but this one has definitely set the bar a little higher. It is wonderfully written!
I guess what made me come back here and write this one is how relevant I thought many of the ideas of this book are. I think the main one would be attitude, especially towards “unfortunate” life events, and how crucial the right attitude it is to living a good life. Jacques lost both of his eyes at the age of eight while at school after some kid bumped into him and his face met with the corner of a desk. What’s amazing is that he was thankful! Thankful to God that this happened to him at a young age because children don’t have this sense of injustice toward life events. He says that they might experience that when injustice comes from people but events to them are simply what they are. He also writes that, at this early age, children are very flexible as they haven’t fully formed any habits yet, both in body and mind and this allows them to adapt in ways a grown man can’t.
If, instead of letting myself be carried along by confidence and throwing myself into things, I hesitated, calculated, thought about the wall, the half-open door, the key in the lock; if I said to myself that all these things were hostile and about to strike or scratch, then without exception I hit or wounded myself. The only easy way to move around the house, the garden or the beach was by not thinking about it at all, or thinking as little as possible. Then I moved between obstacles the way they say bats do. What the loss of my eyes had not accomplished was brought about by fear. It made me blind.
Anger and impatience had the same effect, throwing everything into confusion. The minute before I knew just where everything in the room was, but if I got angry, things got angrier than I. They went and hid in the most unlikely corners, mixed themselves up, turned turtle, muttered like crazy men and looked wild. As for me, I no longer knew where to put hand or foot. Everything hurt me. This mechanism worked so well that I became cautious
“Si au lieu de me laisser porter par la confiance et de me jeter à travers les choses, j'hésitais, je calculais, si je pensais au mur, à la porte entrebâillée, à la clé dans la serrure, si je me disais que toutes ces choses étaient hostiles, allaient me cogner, me griffer alors infailliblement je me cognais, je me blessais. La seule manière commode de me déplacer à travers la maison, le jardin ou la plage était de n'y pas penser du tout ou d'y penser le moins possible. J'étais alors guidé, je circulais entre les obstacles comme on dit que les chauves-souris font. Ce que la perte de mes yeux n'avait pas su faire, la peur le faisait : elle me rendait aveugle.
La colère et l'impatience avaient les mêmes effets : elles brouillaient tout le paysage. Une minute plus tôt, je connaissais exactement la place de tous les objets de la pièce, mais si j'entrais en colère les objets se fâchaient bien plus que moi : ils allaient se réfugier dans les coins les plus inattendus, ils se troublaient, ils chaviraient, ils bégayaient comme des fous, ils avaient l'air hagard. Quant à moi je ne savais plus où mettre la main ni le pied : je me faisais mal partout. Ah ! Cette mécanique-là marchait bien, de sorte que je devenais prudent.”
It wasn’t his attitude toward just this one event but toward the many more he’ll face in the following years. A question that comes to mind is: Is it nature or nurture? And I personally think it’s always both. Obviously, his parents’ attitudes and decisions played a major role in his outlook on life which unsubscribed him from the victim mentality.
This reminds me of the Chinese Parable I shared in a previous issue. This apparently “unfortunate” incident led to a state of blindness that shaped a whole inner world allowing him to truly “see” the world around him and was his refuge in the most atrocious times.
Another idea that this book beautifully presents is that of friendship and human relationships. Jean, Jean, Jean…When you’ll read about Jean, and the intimacy he shared with Jacques, you won’t help the feeling of jealousy that it’ll ignite within you. Everyone needs a Jean in their life.
I no longer needed to question Jean to know the answers he would give, or talk to him to have him follow my train of thought. He was my friend, first and foremost among all the others. He was the mirror to which I returned to find the best side of myself. Absent or present, he was my witness.
Je n'avais plus besoin d'interroger Jean pour connaître ses réponses, ni de lui parler pour qu'il sût ma pensée. Il était mon ami avant et par-delà tous les autres. Il était donc le miroir où je venais retrouver la meilleure part de moi-même. Absent, présent, il était mon témoin.
Honestly, I was surprised when I read about Jacques’ relationship with God. I believe it was the first time I come across a French person who speaks about God and faith the way Jacques did. La Laicité must have something to do with that: It almost completely removed God from the French discourse.
The guy used to do Tahajjud without realizing it. I mean, come on!
When I encounter someone with this conviction it makes me wonder if they ever came across Islam. It appears that Jacques did. He spoke of “…the centuries between the prophecy of Mohammed and the crowning of Charlemagne” and “…the Kirghiz shepherd who prayed to Allah three times a day with his face to the ground”. (We know it’s five, so either the shepherd didn’t know what he was doing or Jacques couldn’t keep count!) It makes me wonder about what he read and from where he learned about it and it makes me think of how guidance is truly a strange thing.
One small piece of advice. In a spot like this don’t go too far afield for help. Either it is right near you, in your heart, or it is nowhere. It is not a question of character, it is a question of reality. If you try to be strong, you will be weak. If you try to understand, you will go crazy.
No, reality is not your character which, for its part, is only a by-product — I can’t define it, a collection of elements. Reality is Here and Now. It is the life you are living in the moment. Don’t be afraid to lose your soul there, for God is in it.
Make all the gestures you like. Wash your hands if there is a place to wash them, stretch out on the ground, jump up and down, make a face, even shed tears if they help, or laugh, sing, curse. If you are a scholar — there is a gimmick for every category — do what I did that night. Reconstruct, out loud, Kant’s arguments in the first chapters of his Critique of Pure Reason. It is hard work and absorbing. But don’t believe any of it. Don’t even believe in yourself. Only God exists.
Un petit conseil : dans des circonstances de ce genre, n'allez pas chercher trop loin le secours. Ou bien il est là contre vous, dans votre cœur, ou bien il n'est nulle part. Ce n'est pas une question de caractère. C'est une question de réalité. Si vous voulez être fort vous serez faible, si vous voulez comprendre, vous deviendrez idiot.
Non, la réalité, ce n'est pas votre caractère qui, lui, n'est qu'une résultante, je ne sais quoi : un agglomérat. La réalité, c'est Ici et Tout de Suite. C'est la vie que vous êtes en train de vivre, là dans la seconde. N'ayez pas peur d'y perdre votre âme : Dieu est dedans.
Faites tous les gestes que vous voudrez. Lavez-vous les mains s'il y a un lavabo, allongez-vous par terre, sautillez sur place, faites la grimace, pleurez même, si cela vous aide, ou riez, chantez, dites des injures ! Si vous êtes un intellectuel (pour chaque catégorie il y a un truc), faites comme moi cette nuit-là : reconstituez à haute voix, et de mémoire, les raisonnements de Kant dans les premiers chapitres de la Critique de la raison pure théorique. C'est difficile: cela occupe. Mais ne croyez à rien de tout cela. Ne croyez pas même en vous. Dieu seul existe.
Meriem.