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BACK TO SCHOOL, WE'RE GOING TO LOVE IT
It's back-to-school, damn it. Damn, because when you have to get ready to put your hands, feet, neck and whole body into a new year, you have to be prepared or, on the contrary, completely relaxed to stand up and face an opponent that may seem out of proportion.
Excessive, depending on the goals we set ourselves: to be a winner, to be a good girlfriend, to be a good sportswoman, to be a good lay, to be a good mom (hello jams), to be a good citizen (hello Manu)... the list is long, but on the whole, at the start of each new school year, we want to approach it like a new class, like I'm in 4th grade, like a new stage with this desire to improve, to emancipate ourselves above all, because human beings simply want to rise. We want to do ourselves good, and sometimes we want to stop doing ourselves harm. Like wanting to stop smoking, drinking, eating fatty foods, doing nothing on a Sunday, or bad-mouthing the people you love.
So we make resolutions, telling ourselves we'll do better this time. We roll up our wife-beater sleeves and get down to the nitty-gritty, looking for the fault that prevented us from being the same person last year as we plan to be this autumn.
By July, we were already scouting out classes in bikram yoga, krav maga and pilates. We scouted out the rooms, the times and the pretty six packs that intense sessions could leave on our bellies. And then, in between, come the vacations, which will allow us to recharge our batteries and face up to the goals we've set ourselves. We'll go to the seaside to recharge our batteries, we'll drink rosé to swallow up the past year, we'll party, we'll have barbecues, we'll binge, we'll dance, we'll have drinks for lunch and tea, in short, we'll decompress from work, physical activities, family, school in the case of kids, and let the red carpet of "I don't give a fuck" roll out.
There are those who go hiking, who open their lungs to the fresh air of the Vosges, the Morvan, or who set off on the Camino de Santiago to break the soles of their feet in search of answers that are right under their noses.
There are those who don't go because they can't, unfortunately. Others because they have a personal project to finish, a thesis, an apartment or a baby to deliver.
This summer period is always rich in everything or abominably nothing.
But whatever the case, the start of the new school year always provokes an emotional turmoil that we try to counter by making arrangements. It's like equipping yourself with down jackets, hats and ice axes before climbing the Annapurna. Because going back to school is a rebirth. It's a time for resetting the counter to zero and hoping to have a new engine under the hood, to have gained the maturity to moonwalk on the face of life.
In fact, people make such a fuss about the start of the school year, even though it's just a light appetizer. It's like the idea of taking a dip in the North Sea: you'd be chattering your teeth just imagining dipping a toe in. But once you're in, it's as good as under a comforter with a hairy guy like Demis Roussos. It's just the introduction to a long novel. A long novel of thrilling adventures, a long novel of love where we french kiss and make out like at a drive-in. In short, back-to-school is the prologue to a beautiful novel, a beautiful story (hi Michel).
So it's good to set yourself goals, to think you're a big computer (hi Francis), to prepare yourself mentally and physically to be the best, to want to kick ass... yes of course you can. But you can just as easily continue lounging around, being cool, prolonging the vacation effect, the pool effect, the Spritz effect, the "we don't care about the start of the new school year, we just want to relax and see life through the prism of enjoyment" effect. And where there's pleasure, there's shoes, and where there's shoes, there's Patricia. As you can see, life's equations are simple. If you want a good back-to-school season, you've got to get out and about, and there's no better way of doing that than in a pair of Patricias.