FROM THE EDITOR:
Octobre, 2022
October, 2022
constant/change
If we had to pick an underlying theme for this season, autumn 2022, it would most certainly be change. Not just the annual drop in temperatures and colorful foliage displays across much of the landscape, but evolution and alterations to our internal landscapes, as well. As many of our clients and followers know, Folie à Trois has relocated our retail operation and gone to an appointment/special events-based business model. With our goal remaining the same, to bring you unique, quality finds from the markets in Paris and the South of France, we shift our focus to a more one-on-one approach with our clientele. While we embrace this new chapter in our professional lives, it is with more than a few tears and our heartfelt thanks to our former partners in retail, the team at Lamps & Lighting here in Baton Rouge.
Every external change certainly involves shifts in thinking and a willingness to allow the inevitable discomforts of new ventures to co-exist with excitement. More than one close friend of Folie is currently embarking on a new path career-wise, as are we, with significant personal implications involved. As one colleague recently shared, “I’m okay, I’m ready, and I’m scared all at the same time!”
One of the changes we watch as this journal entry is being written is the final chapter of one of the sure constants in the lives of our British friends, and indeed of people all over the world. The loss of the steady, enduring leadership of Her Majesty Elizabeth II stirs the souls of many, while simultaneously heralding the passing of power as King Charles III assumes the British throne. It’s a change anticipated for many years, yet a bit surreal and unsettling when it actually happens.
To our way of thinking successfully navigating change is a bit like “letting it be,” as the classic Beatles lyrics invite us to do. Yet, more accurately, as one on the cusp of a new phase in life, I’m inclined to say it’s a matter of “letting it become.” To let it become involves patience, acceptance, open eyes and an open heart. Only those who are not only willing to “do,” but also to « watch » for what one cannot do on one’s own, will understand.
The imagery of flowing water symbolizes the dichotomy of constancy and change, with layers of beauty, from surface to depths. There’s constancy in what seems to be a never-ending flow toward and into other waters, yet change with every ripple and crest along the way. In his novel about rural life in early 20th-century Kentucky, Jayber Crow, American writer Wendell Berry pens a fitting evocation of that idea.
“The surface of the quieted river … is like a window looking into another world that is like this one except that it is quiet. Its quietness makes it seem perfect. Though that other world can be seen only momentarily, it looks everlasting… The surface of the river is like a living soul, which is easy to disturb, is often disturbed, but growing calm, shows what it was, is and will be.” ***
As we all change and become new versions of ourselves, may we firmly hold onto those constants that have the quiet power to guide and comfort.
*** Jayber Crow, by Wendell Berry
