Ten years ago, I quit my job as a bookseller
I packed my luggage
and I left Paris to live in Los Angeles.
I didn’t know anyone there
but I knew that I wanted
to make movies
so it made sense to go to Hollywood.
I came back to France
after a few years
and when people would ask me:
: “What do you do in life?”
I would reply:
: “I’m a filmmaker. I make movies.
Actually, I’m just back from a few years in Los Angeles.”
I would oftentimes see a little sparkle
in their eyes as they'd say:
“That’s amazing!
What type of films do you direct?
Can we see them at the movie theatre?
Have you worked with famous people?”
And I would reply:
: “I direct mostly fiction.
You can’t watch my films at the movie theatre
- not yet.
And no...no, I haven’t worked with anyone famous.”
At that moment
there would be a silence
long enough for their enthusiasm
to go down a few inches
And then,
we would keep on talking about Los Angeles.
Little by little,
tired of seeing people’s reaction
going from curious to disappointed
when they would realize
that I was a “wannabe”,
I started lying about what I was doing.
I stopped saying
“I’m a filmmaker”
to say “I work as a freelance.”
I stopped saying
to say “I make videos for clients.”
It sounded less dreamy
but it was useful and practical.
We would talk about how to find clients,
how to bill them, about gear.
And more importantly,
I stopped feeling like
like I had to apologize for my lack of success.
I began to feel a bit weird about it though
, so I asked myself
“Why do you lie about what you do?
And why do you feel
feel compelled to diminish people's expectations
so they won’t think you’ve failed?”
It’s at that point that I really started
to become interested
about the concept of “success”
and how it has evolved
in the last few years,
especially with the social medias’ arrival in our lives
that remind us daily
how we rank on the graph of success
compared to the other 8 billion.
This ranking on the “success graph”
explains why sometimes,
when we talk with people,
a contest starts
to find out who has the most impact.
It’s conveyed through innocent words:
“I know X person”
“X number of people follow me”
“I travelled through X number of countries”,
“I was a speaker at X event”.