The Flying Romanian / Romanul Zburator

One of the main topics of my regular exchanges with my parents are traditions, be those family, local or national. Their main concern is whether I keep any of those, and if I don't, to encourage me, or even (emotionally) blackmail me to do so. So, there is that awkward moment when they ask the question, and even if I know they would ask it, I'm still not prepared to it, and take a minute too long to answer..."no". Of course, I could elude the question, make a joke, laugh, ask another question instead etc. But I (reluctantly) choose to be honest about it. However, the "no" is more difficult to assume since I live abroad. Because this "no (while living abroad)" means - for their recipient(s) - you're denying your roots, you're not "assuming" your first identity, you're breaking the community' continuity and so on. While a "no (while being in your country)" only means that you're an individual w...

"You won't make it”. I don't know about you, but I hear that a lot around me. Or told to me. Implied : “Don't do it, it's too risky”/ “Don’t do it you might fail”/”Don’t do it you might suffer” etc.etc. Of course, our internal voices are telling this to us all the time. But when there's - on top of it- a figure of authority saying it, it becomes much more complicated to NOT listen to it. The problem with this statement is not its intentions (to preserve us from something, an indefinite bad which might happen). It's the results - or lack of results I should say. Because experience shows that once you try to do something, you might fail or...you might succeed.   In both cases, experience comes with a key learning : either that you can try, fail, and still feel good about the whole trying experience, either that you can trust yourself because you have proved you can succeed in the past. So, my advice: listen to other people’ advice. But ...

In one of my previous articles, I was addressing the widespread question of "are all Romanians beggars and thieves" ? I will let you re-discover the answer to that . However, despite that, and when living in France, one doesn't stop being confronted continually with the topic, even in the "intellectual" media. For example, on November 19 th France Inter talked during 5 min about the tragi-comical destiny of 7 paintings stolen a couple of years ago in the Netherlands.  Of course, the thieves were Romanians, and of course they were so unprofessional that they were quickly caught (they left their fingerprints on the crime scene). But the story continues when one of the thieves' mother realized her son had brought the paintings home. She quickly burnt them to clean the scenes. So, besides beings (unprofessional) thieves, Romanians are also uncultivated! One could not find a better example to fit the stereotypes. But when you hear that, don...

In my last article I talked tangentially about the workplace. But it is a vast topic. It tells an interesting story about our society, ourselves and the position we occupy in that society. Let’s play a bit with it by adding two factors in: culture and gender. The questions which arise are: What are the different rapports to the workplace as per the culture around ? And do men and women have the same position ? For the sake of the demonstration, let's take two countries where hierarchy is overly important. France and Japan, for example. In both countries, one’s honor depends on their position in the workplace . But the stakes are different. In France, it is power for oneself and – potentially – the inner circle. In Japan, it is responsibility for the others. In both cases, high position (therefore high power and/or responsibility) is associated with the dominant gender . Battles are fought against the other (men), from other circles or other clans. Those wh...

Back in the 70's Romania, psychology was a prohibited topic of study. In case you are wondering why, well, in a totalitarian regime, one couldn't allow people to think too much about themselves and their rapport to power and to those who held it. The mere existence of the Leaders' personality cult did not allow any doubt (or an inner leader).   Psychology made its way back as a topic of study in the '90s. However, it lacked professional “popularizers” until very recently with Dr. Cristian Andrei (a Romanian equivalent of Dr.Phil ). In these conditions, everybody used their own filter of interpretation for the other’ mental health problems – real or imagined - with “crazy” on top of their favorites. Thus, I'd never heard of personality disorders before I got to France. Here, people spoke openly (compared to Romania) about their disabled brothers or sisters, their parents struggling with alcohol or with narcissist disorders, etc. However, while mental hea...

  Romanians, at least in my experience, have a very superstitious rapport to others. From early days, parents teach their children to be aware of the others' evil thoughts and intentions (aka “the evil eye”). This warning concretizes itself on their newborns’ bodies, under the form of a red thread tied to their wrists, that they would keep on until they become toddlers. This thread is meant to protect them from the evil eye, at least as long as they are the most fragile. This custom was probably built to circumvent young children' mortality, due at that time to lack of a healthcare system. But when one believes in something it becomes true, and parents are relieved to be able to protect their children from the others' envy, if not from all the rest of bad things which can happen to them. When children grow up - they don't wear a thread anymore - they are taught not to be very show-off or else they might get exposed to evil actions from the others. We...