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Alone, but together: the noise that protects us from silence

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It is a late-summer afternoon and the beach is starting to empty. A little further along there is a group of friends I know well: beach umbrellas set close together, a shared cool box, someone loudly telling a story the others have already heard, and everyone laughing as if it were the first time. My son watches them for a while, then turns to me and says, with that disarming naturalness only young people have: “But they can’t stand each other. And yet they’re always together.” I didn’t answer straight away. I had spent a lot of time with that group, gladly and with the kindness I try to show everyone, and I had never really asked myself what held it together. Yet the clues were there. In the confidences I received, each of them had something to say about the others: judgements whispered after a dinner, ironic remarks about whoever had just left, the openly admitted weariness of having to meet up again the following Saturday. And the following Saturday, without fail, everyone met up...
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Alone, but together: the noise that protects us from silence

It is a late-summer afternoon and the beach is starting to empty. A little further along there is a group of friends I know well: beach umbrellas set close together, a shared cool box, someone loudly telling a story the others have already heard, and everyone laughing as if it were the first time. My son watches them for a while, then turns to me and says, with that disarming naturalness only young people have: “But they can’t stand each other. And yet they’re always together.” I didn’t answer straight away. I had spent a lot of time with that group, gladly and with the kindness I try to show everyone, and I had never really asked myself what held it together. Yet the clues were there. In the confidences I received, each of them had something to say about the others: judgements whispered after a dinner, ironic remarks about whoever had just left, the openly admitted weariness of having to meet up again the following Saturday. And the following Saturday, without fail, everyone met up...
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The silence after “Bro, fuck off”

What gets decided in the few seconds when a teacher doesn’t answer First day of lessons with a first-year class. We are still taking each other’s measure: I don’t know their names, they don’t know who I am. A girl is sitting with her back to me. I ask her, kindly, to turn round and not to stay facing away while we’re having the lesson. “Bro, fuck off.” For those who don’t spend their mornings in school corridors: “bro” comes from “brother”. Among teenagers it’s a familiar way of addressing each other, almost a verbal tic. Aimed at a teacher you’ve only just met, and followed by those two words, it becomes something else. It closes the distance and strikes at it in the same moment. I didn’t answer straight away. I stayed silent for a few seconds. It is those seconds I’d like to write about. A sentence said in front of everyone An insult received one to one can sometimes be allowed to drop. In front of a class it’s different, because a class is an audience, and an audience waits...
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Writing with artificial intelligence: is the voice still ours?

It’s almost half past eleven. After an argument, you want to write a message to say sorry. You’ve started three: one too cold, one too long, one that sounded like an excuse. So you open an app and type: “Help me apologise sincerely, without sounding syrupy.” A few seconds later the text is there. It is balanced, warm, even beautiful. Your finger hovers over “send”. Do those words really say what you feel? Or do they express something that sounds good, but that you haven’t yet made your own? The question concerns artificial intelligence, but it touches an older one: what makes the words we address to others our own? An old kind of help Asking for help to find the words is nothing new. People who could not write could turn to a public scribe. We buy greeting cards with ready-printed phrases. We ask a friend to read over an important letter. A card bought at the stationer’s doesn’t necessarily make the affection of the person who signs it false. And someone who struggles to express...
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The weight of expectations in relationships: philosophy and happiness

Why do we expect so much from others… and so little from ourselves? It’s a simple question, but one with profound consequences. Everyday life is full of it: we expect our partner to grasp our silences at once, a friend to get in touch “without our having to ask”, a colleague to be more appreciative, our children to be always grateful, the world to notice us. Meanwhile, our expectations of ourselves seem to grow fainter. We let ourselves off for everything we give up, we procrastinate, we tell ourselves that “nothing changes anyway” or that “it isn’t worth it”. Why? The long shadow of disappointment According to many psychologists, the mechanism hidden behind this imbalance has to do with a subtle, chronic form of mistrust: mistrust in ourselves, often disguised as overcontrol of others. As if we were saying, unconsciously: “I can’t change my life, but if you behaved the way I want, then I could be happy” . In this sense, expectations become a form of emotional dependence. The philosop...
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When love becomes possession: freedom and control

There are relationships that dress themselves in love but breathe domination. They don’t shout, they don’t always wound with words, but slowly they build an invisible cage made of control, expectations and lies. Behind the mask of “us forever” there often lies a deep inability to truly love. The desire to possess the other person – to organise their life, absorb their choices, deny them any elsewhere – is not love, but a subtle and dangerous form of relational toxicity . Possession in disguise Many people mistake need for affection, jealousy for passion, manipulation for attention. In reality, the need to control the other springs from an inner emptiness that one does not want to face. Erich Fromm understood this well: in The Art of Loving he distinguishes mature love – founded on freedom and responsibility – from immature love, which seeks in the other a narcissistic compensation, a crutch to keep from falling. Love, Fromm writes, is not a passing emotion but a capacity that is cul...
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Bobbi Gibb: the Boston Marathon and the courage to overcome limits

The story of Bobbi Gibb: overcoming limits and rewriting history When it comes to overcoming our own limits and breaking the mould, few stories are as inspiring as Bobbi Gibb’s. At a time when women were kept on the margins of competitive sport, Bobbi Gibb did far more than break down barriers: she ran towards history and opened the way for generations of women athletes. In the 1960s, the world of marathon running was an exclusively male domain. It was commonly believed that women were not physically capable of running long distances. Bobbi Gibb, a young woman from Cambridge, Massachusetts, had a dream that defied these conventions. Ever since she was a child Bobbi had loved running, but her passion went beyond the simple pleasure of moving: she wanted to take part in the Boston Marathon, one of the most prestigious races in the world. In 1966, Bobbi decided to turn her dream into reality. She sent in her application to run the Boston Marathon, but the answer she received was a fla...
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Someone who always lies: understanding lies, protecting trust

Friday night, a pizzeria. A friend tells everyone he met a famous footballer at the airport. He says they talked for ages, adds one detail, then another. Someone asks a question. You stay silent: that very day he had texted you that he was at home with a fever. You might have misunderstood. A date can slip, a memory can get muddled. But it isn’t the first time something hasn’t added up. There was that trip whose details kept changing. That job he got, then never started. That important acquaintance nobody ever met. At first you let it go. Then you start listening in a different way. While he talks, you compare, you remember, you look for confirmation. And perhaps this is what upsets you most: you went out to spend time with a friend and find yourself checking a story. What is a lie looking for? Faced with someone who lies often, the words come quickly: serial liar, narcissist, manipulator. They give a name to our discomfort and, for a moment, we feel we have understood. But namin...
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