« Learning to wait: there is no waste of time, only time lived. Instead of getting annoyed with queues, waiting rooms, traffic jams, thinking that there is no time wasted, only time lived. Living is an opportunity that has been given to us, and an experience that will be taken away from us one day. Instead of wanting to be somewhere else, then, otherwise, let's be here. Fully. In the queue, in the waiting room, now I breathe, I feel what is going on in my body. Since I can't "do" something, I can "be": be there, be who I am, think of Montaigne and Goethe and others, who centuries ago understood that. I can do something else of my conscience than annoy myself against the wait (for example if my emails arrive slowly or if my web page takes time to load). Certainly, the impatience of the West has been a factor of progress (albeit...). But this progress has gone faster than our wisdom, and have taken precedence over us, made us slaves. Let us free ourselves from our unnecessary impatience. And let's keep the others, if there are any left... »

« Presence in everyday life, small gestures When I eat, when I cook, tidy, tinker, repair... Do not do so by telling me that I could, instead, do something better, more important, more urgent. That may be true and, in this case, there will be a time to think about it and decide to organize my life differently. But, in the meantime, no need to pollute my present with this. I feel alive. I fully live in what I am doing right now: I am trying to reduce the place of this feeling of doing things "while waiting" to move on. When I read his evening story to my child, while I still have work, emails, while I have not yet dined: I rescale here and now. I am with my child, and what is important is that I am completely with him, fully. That, while I'm telling the story, I'm really telling it for him. Not thinking about anything else, hoping to be somewhere else. This moment, like every moment of life, is a chance and a blessing. If I'm not there at these moments, I'll mourn them later. »

« Stop. Stop an activity, like that, in full motion. And observe what was happening in us: what state of our bodies, of our thoughts? I often try this exercise in times when I am under pressure: when there are too many things in my life to do, too many requests to which I have committed to respond. Like everyone else, I feel suffocated. So when the sense of urgency is at its highest ("a few minutes? a few seconds? fast, do, act, accelerate, save time! I stop. I force myself to breathe calmly, to turn my mind to an important detail: the sky, the clouds, my breathing again, the face of someone I love, a thought from a recent reading and what it has aroused in me. I get out of the urgent to take a whiff of importance. Then I start running again, of course. But I feel like a whale that has caught its breath, before diving back to the bottom where it has to fetch its food. Stop to make our mind breathe, especially when we are in a hurry... »