I’ve written it before: our sociability prevails to the point of lamenting loneliness and often cultivating relationships with others. There is a kind of sympathy for the lonely among the majority, and whenever someone praises a time of solitude, he is not believed.

It is true that we spend half our lives in meetings, accepting that the liveliest joys and most meaningful celebrations take place in the midst of groups, mostly with families, some the size of real tribes. With the promotion of graduates, you have to see yourself; with colleagues from different jobs we’ve been through, you have to see each other; with the old residents of the neighborhood, with those from the condominium or citadel, with those from the parish, club, sports field. I’m kind of interested in what goes on at meetings and I’m old enough to have attended most of them.

The ones I attended for work had an “agenda” and gathered in minutes, tried to use every minute (however, I left many at two in the morning) and happened at a time when the participants were smoking indoors, and I was the only one who didn’t. When they met at three in the afternoon, some of them would nod off their recent lunch and drink a lot of coffee. However, the academic quality of the institutions and the subjection of tasks to statutes and laws are required.

I have also spent thirty years of my life devoting Fridays, when the office is free, to a passionate and lucid conversation about reading specially chosen to fly high and free. I give credit to the group that gave me joy and intelligence.

I’ve never liked birthdays or parties because at those events, words lose their place and are replaced by toasts, dancing or loud music. I have always preferred, as Wilde would say, “conversational gymnastics” and which develops between several or in sessions adapted to speech in turn. When testimonies cross or one voice roars over others, it’s no more a meeting than a chicken coop.

Dishes subordinated to table positions condemn guests to chatting with whoever is on one side or the other, which is a lucky or unlucky occasion, depending on how you look at it. It is not true that we all “love each other equally” – which means we understand each other – within groups. You can’t just talk about youth or diseases (this kind of information abounds in my generation), when friends meet. Sometimes members of the group know each other so well that their favorite topics are written on their faces: politics, literature, cinema… Or gossip, which we all love.

And so we go, from meeting to meeting, singing happy birthday or evoking those moments that were happier than the present moment, with some illness on the shoulder or with any losses. Until the final meeting, the one where we will be personal and without conscience.

This final meeting is also subject to cultural and religious codes, in such a way that the deceased knows and can imagine them, when they are held in his memory. (OR)