"Profitez-bien" is one of those expressions I wish would transcend the barrier of language and import itself into the English language. It means, more or less, take advantage of. "Profitez-bien de ta journée," "Profitez-bien de ton voyage," "Profitez-bien de la France."
Wherever you're going, love the hell out of it and take it for what it's got.
But how do you "profite" from everything?
I'm coming to the panicky phase of my study abroad experience, where the end is in sight and you can't believe it is. Where you start to think there wasn't enough time, you didn't do enough, you have so much more to see. You get bogged down a little. You start counting days. You start missing things you haven't even left yet. What about those places I never visited? What about those people I never met?
I'm coming to the panicky phase of my study abroad experience, where the end is in sight and you can't believe it is. Where you start to think there wasn't enough time, you didn't do enough, you have so much more to see. You get bogged down a little. You start counting days. You start missing things you haven't even left yet. What about those places I never visited? What about those people I never met?
Ironically, this is exactly how I felt when I left Michigan. I was worried about the things I was leaving behind. The things I wouldn't get to experience, the people I wouldn't get to be around. College is so short already—why was I leaving? Leaving these amazing people, this amazing town, my nooks that I have learned how to navigate, a place where I know how to "profite."
But the thing is, you'll never have enough time. You'll never get to do everything. Doing something inherently means sacrificing something else.
My dad always gets angry at me for saying "yes" to everything, having my hands in too many jars of jam or whatever that expression is, and feeling a need to be a part of everything.
I've recently discovered why I've always been like this. It's because I have a fear of missing out. I'm scared of not experiencing something. Of not experiencing everything. Chance and happenstance have so often lead me to Eden that I don't want to let go of any occassion or opportunity. But in doing that, in trying to "profite de tous," and in beginning to worry about if you are doing so or not, you profite less and less. You regret rather than dream. You forget that you're in the middle of France, on the edge of the world, and two months is 60x longer than any housefly ever had.
You can never have enough time to do everything. You can never be in two places at once, and even if you could each place would appreciate you less for not having you there wholly. You can't go to every country, you can't meet all the people in the world that could change your life and give you euphoria. You can't, babe.
And that's not awful.
This realization makes me think of one of my favorite conversations I ever had. It was with Poonam. We were talking about death--I was in one of those funks I used to get in when thinking about "the big black blob." They started in middle school and would come every couple of months or so. I would start to think about my own death, what it would be like to not exist and try to put myself in that state. Then, an emotion that could have quickly tumbled into panic if I didn't immediately draw myself out.
"I just can't help thinking that when we die, we die. We're all specks. In a hundred years, we won't mean anything to anyone. Nothing around us will exist. Ants on a balloon. Floating. Nothing we do remains."
"Yeah," Poonam replies, "I s n ' t i t g r e a t?"
In that hot second, Poon turned my perspective upside-down, and it has remained that way. My biggest fear was her biggest relief.
The realization that you can't do everything, it's not depressing. It's a fact. All it means is that there's just too much awesome stuff, too much worth seeing, too much worth doing, too many people worth meeting.
And that thought, well it just makes me subliminally happy.
Profitez-bien, tout le monde, de tout ce que tu peux et de tout ce que tu veux.
Poonami—thanks for always making me walk on my head.
And it goes on... Things that have reminded me of this post and this feeling. I think it is important to collect them here in the spirit of revisiting our thoughts because realizing something once is sometimes not enough:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AH7YxbuZQs8
http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2011/04/21/135508305/the-sad-beautiful-fact-that-were-all-going-to-miss-almost-everything?sc=nl&cc=es-20110424
And it goes on... Things that have reminded me of this post and this feeling. I think it is important to collect them here in the spirit of revisiting our thoughts because realizing something once is sometimes not enough:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AH7YxbuZQs8
http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2011/04/21/135508305/the-sad-beautiful-fact-that-were-all-going-to-miss-almost-everything?sc=nl&cc=es-20110424
