The Paris Collection: Introduction

On September 14, 2015 I arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport and began my three month stay in Paris. 

One of the first questions I get asked is why I came to Paris. The short answer I usually give is 'I came to Paris to take some time to read and write.' This is the short answer because it is the easily understood one.

The question is a difficult one to answer because it parallels the 'what do you for a living' question. It's about what you are doing with your life and therefore, it's about who you are as a person. So whether it's close friends or new acquaintances who ask you, it's hard to launch into a precise explanation of what it is you are doing with your life. 

The idea of moving to Paris first came to me a year ago when I was working in Toronto. Around this time, many of those around me were reaching milestones in their careers and personal lives; they had received promotions, changed companies or industries, or were returning to school. Engagements and marriages were becoming common. It was a time for significant decisions and changes.

I, too, had been sensing that it was time for something else. I couldn't quite pinpoint what it would be, but at the time I knew what I didn't want. I didn't want to go to graduate school, I didn't want to work for a different company, I didn't want to travel, I didn't want to pick up a new hobby or go to concerts and events in Toronto.

And now looking back on this past year, I think what I really wanted was to pass all my days composed of activities entirely of my own choosing. Up until now, there was always some part of my time that had been directed by others. In school we attend classes, show up for exams, and hand in papers. At work we have designated hours, and tasks to complete within that time. When I lived in Korea for a year, I had experienced some small taste of time freedom, as I was working only twenty-five hours a week, and when I think back on that time, one of the first things my thoughts continually returned to were those free hours. In Toronto, I had reached a point where I wanted to claim back my time - what I really wanted was complete freedom.

And if you asked me what I would do with that freedom - in the vein of the classic question 'If you had all the time and money in the world right now, what would you do?' my answer would have been 'To read a lot, to write a little, and every now and then, to return to the world and live fully.'

And then I asked myself why not?

It sounds a little ridiculous doesn't it? To have entire days just to read. But reading has been possibly the only activity that I've returned to over and over throughout the years. 

And what does this desire to read mean? Just what is it about reading? I've found that reading is a way to get lost in something beyond ourselves. In non-fiction we are given a chance to learn from disciplines outside our personal realm of knowledge. And in fiction, we are given the chance to live multiple lives, crossing boundaries of gender, age, race, and history. There are written words that have broken me open and understood me in a way that no person has. Reading is a way to live in possibilities that are beyond the confines of one's own existence, and I wanted to have more time to do this.

I suppose I wanted to be a student. If you tell people you're a student, they understand easily. But I didn't want to be an actual student, in the way you can say 'I'm a student at school X studying program X.' School has provided many benefits, but in terms of actual learning, I have felt that my formal structured education has not yielded returns the way my self-learning has. Is it true that for many of us, the things we learn best are the things we learn for their own sake - for the love of a subject or to satisfy some curiosity - rather than for the purpose of selecting the correct multiple choice answer or to hand in a thousand word paper to the teaching assistant? 

The one outcome I set out for myself was to write a series of essays, entitled The Paris Collection, over the next few months.

Writing essays is not necessarily enjoyable and it's not very fun, but it is possibly one of the best ways to make sense of one's thoughts. And in the process of forming thoughts into words, it brings one's thinking to a more deliberate level, allowing for the possibility of changing our actions and habits, and eventually for the possibility of changing who we are. Here is where writing offers something else. In life, each moment exists but once, and it is rare that in that very instant, any of us acts in a way that reflects our best selves. Writing is the gift to revisit and reflect on the past, to set aspirations, letting us become greater in writing than we are in person.

And so, this stay in Paris is how I have personally chosen to carve out some dedicated time to read and write, which really means to reflect and think, learn and live. 

Why Paris specifically? I could have gone anywhere, and I chose Paris because if places have qualities like people do, then Paris is the place I identify with most. 

This city has a long history for being an important intellectual and artistic place where thinkers and artists from around the world have gathered. It has been the home of cafés and salons in the time periods of Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rousseau, of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Picasso, and of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Set in this atmosphere, I envisioned a life of small daily pleasures and unique grand experiences, and in between these life moments, the time to retreat into the world of reading and writing. 

It seems to me that this city's penchant for bringing together both rational thinking and passionate feeling is what mirrors the complexity of a full human life. It is this idea of what Paris represents that draws me to this place; and as Hemingway once put it, "If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast."