He stopped in his tracks and faced her as she approached. She hoisted herself onto the stage.
Blinded by the lights, she took a few steps toward him, then opened her handbag and searched through all the junk it contained. Paul always made fun of her when he saw her looking for something in her purse.
Now, in terrifying silence, here were five hundred people watching her. She could feel their judgment, their scorn.
Those damned lights lit her up but didn’t light up the bottom of her bag.
She finally got out her wallet and quickly opened it. She found a fifty-euro note and offered it to her CEO.
“Please accept my contribution to compensate you for what you deserve.”
Visibly shocked, he stepped back, dumbstruck, almost frozen to the spot.
Alice then turned to the audience and shouted: “I invite everyone to do the same! Come on!”
There was a lull, a tense silence, as if people needed some time to get over their astonishment and realize what was going on. Then she felt something shift in the air. The tide was turning.
A few seconds later, the stage was rushed by employees waving banknotes or checks under the nose of the CEO, who stood scarlet with shame. Very quickly, the stage was full. A crowd of people surrounded the CEO, who was stunned by the shouting and dripping with sweat because of the heat of all the bodies and the lights, unable to escape this surge of intense generosity.
It took the security guards more than an hour to extricate the boss and clear the room.
The next day, a memo from the board of directors stated that the CEO was relinquishing his bonus and that there would be a general salary increase of 5 percent.
12
Alice was now considered a hero in the office. There were endless messages of sympathy, compliments, invitations, and thanks to her via email, text, or just verbally as she walked down the hall.
Some people tried to explain what she had done, perhaps to dissociate themselves from it and regain their obligatory neutrality. It was commented on with reference to philosophers she hadn’t read or psychological movements and schools of thought that were in fashion.
“Very Taoist, what you did yesterday!” said one of her colleagues from the Public Relations department of the ready-to-wear section.
“Yes,” confirmed someone else from the Perfume department. “Very interesting that you embodied the spirit of Taoism that way.”
That evening, Alice thought about all those strange references. No one, absolutely no one, had seen her act as inspired by Christianity.
Of course, it was much more trendy to allude to Taoism than to Christianity. Jesus was most likely a has-been. And to Alice’s professional entourage, the optics of something was essential. Nevertheless, those erroneous attributions intrigued her, gave her a desire to dig deeper into the matter.
She went into a bookstore and was advised to start with the Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu, the fundamental work on Taoism. She went home, let the nanny leave, and had a quick dinner with Théo before putting him to bed. Paul would probably be home late, as usual.
She stretched out on the sofa, a cup of steaming-hot citrus green tea on the coffee table, and picked up the mysterious work.
A preface by the publisher introduced Lao Tzu: An archivist in the court of the Zhou in China in the sixth century BC, he decided one day to leave the empire so as not to passively watch its decline. Just as he was about to cross the Great Wall of China, an officer who guarded the western gate convinced him to write down a summary of his wisdom. And that is how the Tao Te Ching was born.
She started reading the work. It was a collection of numbered precepts. There were eighty-one in all, and each one seemed to fit on a single page. It would be a quick read. And yet, right from the first lines, she felt she should have made herself a whiskey and Coke: more anachronistic than green tea, of course, but much more effective for relaxing and preventing a headache.
I
A path that can be traced is not the eternal path:
the Tao. A word that can be spoken is not the eternal word.
Without a name, it is the source of heaven and earth. With a name, it is the mother of ten thousand beings.
Thus, an eternal non-desire represents its essence, and through eternal desire it manifests its limit.
These two states coexist and are inseparable, differing only in name. When thought of together: a mystery! The mystery of mysteries.
This is the portal to all essences.
Fine.
Okay.
What if she put the TV on? A nice little American series, or even a TV reality show so she could fall into a carefree coma?
Come on. Make a little effort.
She took a sip of tea.
Another page.
She read the first sentences and was about to stop before falling asleep when one saying caught her attention.
The holy man produces without owning anything, works without expecting anything, accomplishes his laudable works without becoming attached to them, and for that very reason, those works survive.
The relationship to her situation amused her. She too had helped Jeremy without expecting anything in return, without taking credit for the results. This book was describing her as a saint! Definitely a good book, then!
Alice kept going, skimming through the precepts that seemed abstract or obscure, sometimes even incomprehensible. Amid a flood of mysterious words, she managed to find several interesting ideas that encouraged her to continue reading.
But after a while, a completely unexpected feeling rose within her. A feeling of déjà vu. The mysterious words she was leafing through reminded her of other words that were just as mysterious, words she had done her best to read and reread without managing to completely understand them, words that were sometimes so strange that she had made fun of them. The words of Jesus.
How was it even possible? Six centuries separated the two men, six centuries and thousands of miles, during eras when people rarely traveled, and well before the invention of printing.
Troubled by her discovery, she rushed to find her Bible–Civil Code and started reading the Tao Te Ching again from the beginning to track down the similarities.
As she discovered them, she wrote them down, and little by little, her surprise was transformed into enthusiasm as she measured the extent of her discovery.
Sometimes Jesus’s words seemed to echo those of Lao Tzu, as if he were answering him:
Lao Tzu: My heart is the heart of someone simple of spirit.
Jesus: Happy are the poor in spirit.
At other times, their words were entirely alike:
Lao Tzu: When the holy man has given away everything, he possesses even more.
Jesus: Give, and ye shall receive a hundredfold.
Even the most incomprehensible, the most unacceptable, words were very close in meaning:
Lao Tzu: Take upon yourself the stains of the kingdom…and you will become the king of the world.
Jesus: Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you.
Sometimes the vocabulary was different, but the ideas were virtually the same:
Lao Tzu: The holy man has no desire other than to have no desires.
Jesus: Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.
And there was the same call to humility:
Lao Tzu: He who puts himself into the light remains obscured. He who is satisfied with himself is not valued.
Jesus: If I glorify myself, my glory means nothing.
Lao Tzu: By putting himself last, the holy man shall be first…He who is strong and great is in an inferior position.
Jesus: For those who exalt themselves will be humbled.
Both men lamented the difficulty of putting their ideas into action:
Lao Tzu: My precepts are very easy to understand, very easy to follow, yet no one can understand or follow them.
Jesus: Why do you call me, “Lord, Lord,” and do not do what I say?
Both of them warned against the dangers of obsession with material goods:
Lao Tzu: There is no worse disaster than the desire to possess.
Jesus: It is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven.
And sometimes with very similar metaphors, very similar words:
Lao Tzu: A room full of gold and jewels cannot be guarded. Taking pride in having many riches and glory will draw misfortune upon you. When a good work has been accomplished and becomes celebrated, you must step back into the shadows: this is the path to heaven.
Jesus: Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
The same invitation to rediscover the essence of a child:
Lao Tzu: Whoever holds the greatness of virtue within him is like a newborn child: poisonous beasts do not sting him, wild animals do not tear him apart, birds of prey do not carry him away.
Jesus: Whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
They even seemed to share the same view of death:
Lao Tzu: He who dies without ceasing to be has attained immortality.
Jesus: Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
That night, Alice went to bed feeling very intrigued.
Either Jesus had copied Lao Tzu or their words, so unclear to her, contained such fundamental truths that they were universal.
And if that was the case, she was determined to decipher them.
13
“Father!”
Alice’s voice echoed beneath the high vaults of the nave.
The man turned toward Alice. He had white hair and many wrinkles on his face. The light filtering through the windows dimly illuminated his deep-set hazel eyes. He looked at her closely for a moment, with kindness.
“My child…”
“I’d like to ask you a few questions…about the Bible.”
He looked at her and smiled. “I don’t think I know you, my child. Are you new to the parish?”
“No, I’m…I’m just passing through Paris. Well…I mean…passing through this neighborhood and…I had some questions I thought of. Do you have a moment?”
She saw him smile at her awkward explanation and realized he wasn’t the kind of man to judge.
“I’m listening.”
She thought back to the questions she had prepared. This time she didn’t want to screw up. She needed clear answers. The day before, the priest from the church near her place, a chubby, jovial man, had given such vague answers that she had wondered whether he was making fun of her.
“Okay, my questions are about the words of Jesus, words that are very well known. But I realized that I actually barely understand what they mean.”
“Ask me.”
“They concern the statements he makes, you know: ‘Happy are the poor in spirit,’ ‘Happy are the afflicted,’ et cetera.”
“The beatitudes.”
“Right. Well, thinking about them, their meaning escapes me a little. For example, take the first one: ‘Happy are the poor in spirit.’ What exactly did he mean by that?” She had carefully articulated “exactly.”
“I see what you’re getting at…That beatitude has been mocked the most because its translation has been distorted for a long time. I’ve read and heard endless times ‘Happy are the poor of spirit’ or ‘the simple of spirit,’ and that’s probably where the expression the ‘happy fool’ comes from. The correct translation should be ‘poor in spirit,’ and that simply means those who are poor in their spirit, in their hearts.”
“All right, but how does being poor in spirit make people happy?”
“Each beatitude represents a situation that is not, in fact, considered as blessed in the earthly world, such as poverty, hunger, or humiliation, and Jesus affirms that each one of those things will bring happiness to a person in the kingdom of heaven.”
The kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God—all those expressions annoyed Alice: how could anyone in the twenty-first century believe there was a God somewhere in the sky? In the years since airplanes and missiles had been flying through it and astronomers had been examining it, they surely would have discovered a God somewhere if there was one! Fine. Let’s move on. Just remember that Jesus promised happiness to people who suffered the situations described.
“And what allows him…to state that?”
He smiled, and his wrinkles stood out even more around his hazel eyes.
“The paths of the Lord are sometimes mysterious, my child.”
“Perhaps, but I would really like to understand.”
“We can’t understand everything, because God is beyond our comprehension. We cannot understand all his thoughts. The words of his son are there to guide us. It’s up to us to follow them in hope, in faith.”
Alice quickly understood that she wouldn’t get any of the explanations she was looking for, no more than the day before. Too bad Jeremy was incommunicado. He was at a retreat for two weeks at the Lérins monastery, according to what his mother had said on the phone. In any case, she would have been a little embarrassed to ask him for explanations of the Bible now, after having finished advising him. Doing things backward was never well regarded.
Her investigations of Taoism had hardly been more fruitful. Taoist monks were not roaming the streets in Paris, and the one she had managed to find—with the greatest of difficulty—spoke French so badly that their dialogue was limited to a few polite, smiling exchanges that were charming but superficial.
She was beginning to believe that her research would lead her nowhere. Either the clergy were jealously guarding the secret of the meaning of the precepts or they didn’t understand them themselves. And yet there was definitely something to discover in the Christian and Taoist scriptures. She could feel it deep down inside her, and her instincts were rarely wrong.
She hated being caught in a situation with no obvious solution. Nothing was more annoying.
Before going home, she headed to the supermarket at the end of the street to do some quick shopping.
What if the solution was to try to understand by experimenting herself? Wasn’t that what she had done by turning the other cheek to the CEO? What we experience in life is more educational than what remains on the intellectual level, isn’t it?
She went into the supermarket. Don’t forget the laundry detergent—there’s none left. She felt a flash of annoyance when she thought of her cleaner’s continual pilfering.
At the entrance to the store, behind the row of checkouts, Catholic Relief Services had set up a stall with large containers in which clients could leave purchases that would be distributed to the poor. A lot of people were in the aisles. The busiest time of day, after work.
Okay, let’s do an experiment. But where to start?
With the most difficult thing, of course. Always start with the most difficult to get it over with.
Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you.
One really had to be a masochist to put oneself in a humiliating situation in order to find happiness.
At that moment, she was pushing her cart past the condom shelf. She stopped dead, remembering how embarrassed she’d felt the last time she put a box of them on the checkout girl’s conveyor belt.
It was too much of a coincidence. A true Jungian synchronicity. She had to seize the opportunity; it was necessary. She knew that very well. Fill her cart with condoms, spread them all out on the checkout girl’s conveyor belt, taking her time, then after she had paid for them, take them all to Customer Service and ask for a refund. Great: two opportu
nities to be humiliated, one after the other!
She felt her hands getting moist just at the thought of it.
It was no time to chicken out. Otherwise she wouldn’t learn anything. She looked around her, took a deep breath, exhaled, breathed in again, then began.
A minute later, she was in line at the checkout, her heart pounding. She was as nervous as if she had to speak in public in front of an audience of two thousand. Lots of people around her. The cashiers were busy: scanners were beeping all over the place, credit cards snapped, bills flew about.
In front of Alice was a granny, and in front of her, a teenager who was putting packs of Coke on the conveyor belt. Just behind her, a man in his early forties, handsome, with brown hair and blue eyes. Help!
It was the granny’s turn in front of her. She put down two yogurts and a package of crackers. Alice bit her lip, a lump in her throat.
The cashier took the yogurts, and the conveyor belt moved, leaving room for the next items.
Alice could feel her heart beating faster and faster. She wanted to run away.
Carry it through to the end. Experiment.
Now.
She took a deep breath and put the first package of condoms on the conveyor belt. Then the second. The third. Then she grabbed them four at a time.
The granny was looking for her change.
The condoms piled up, a veritable mountain of them. Alice added the last package and glanced furtively behind her. The handsome man smiled at her.
Lord.
The checkout girl was actually a woman, and well into her fifties. She had short hair pushed behind her ears. She took the first package without the slightest reaction. Alice took a breath.
“Are they all the same?” she asked, pointing to the pile.
Alice stammered without thinking, “Yes…yes, yes.”
Alice Asks the Big Questions Page 8