I was at work when I saw this info on my social networks: “Urgent: Incredible bearded man seeks kidney.”
I stopped paying attention to political chatter to read this moving request more closely. The wife of the incredible bearded man implored the universe to send her a kidney donor capable of saving her husband.
“And so dear friends and complete strangers (you who read these words), she wrote. We need a kidney. I know it’s crazy as a request.”
In the middle of an existential crisis
I didn’t know this couple, but I clicked on share, as I usually do for animals offered for adoption or calls for donations during natural disasters. Perhaps the alignment of the stars would be favorable to him. Or maybe not. But at least I felt like I had done my part. I was 34, living in Philadelphia, and the only time I had been to the hospital was the day I was born. Unlike my boyfriend, David, with whom I lived, who was more the type to go to the emergency room with the slightest toothache.
I had every good reason not to donate a kidney. I was in the midst of an existential crisis, like in my early days at university when I studied the works of the psychiatrist and philosopher Victor Frankl. At the time, I regularly threw intractable questions at other students like: “But really what is the point of living?”
I had also chosen a uniform – black trousers and a black turtleneck – all that was missing was a cigarette and a beret to look like a real existentialist. At the end of the semester, I decided to drop out. I moved to a small seaside town and reread for the umpteenth time Find meaning in your life of Frankl on the beach with the seagulls.
What’s missing
As I analyzed my feelings, I began to tell myself that it wasn’t this existential void that was coming back to haunt me, but rather a relationship problem. Deep down inside, I was still in love with David, but more than once our fights got out of hand.
“I am leaving you to settle in Italy, I had yelled back from a stay there.
– That’s it! he answered me. Go pick grapes in Tuscany.”
Of course, I had no intention of living from working the vines in the Chianti region, but I was tired of my job as a health care assistant. I was convinced that I was called to do great things; I still hadn’t found what.
Things haven’t changed over the summer, nor over the fall. I went to work, I came home and I imagined myself somewhere else. David and I had spent our September holidays by the sea, and I was staying
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