I ask myself this question every morning.

Perhaps I have not been successful because I don’t stop tormenting myself for at least one day, trying to come up with a reasonable explanation for all this that would actually make sense.

I glance at the people around me.

Hits for this cloud of inexpressive faces. Bent down heads, lost in the read of the leader free newspaper. Or to add, smothered into the screens of their smartphone. Nobody looks at anybody. Nobody talks to anybody. People were walking with closed eyes – they know the roads of their lives by hearts.

You have to see them pushing each other to get through the subway. Trying to fold our arms, looking straight at each other at the slight accidental brushing of hands.

It’s funny that all those wonderful years spent traveling in the subways, all those shakes, all those missed connections have affected me mentally. It’s been twenty years now that the subway, the world, the strikes, the business district have formed the geography of my existence.

Twenty years.

Twenty years that I have been lost to me, the concrete and in the crowd, an infamous creature. I have also been married for twenty with my gorgeous wife Léa. And the record of our married life remains meager: No children and a substitute for emotion that has worn off. Our wedding anniversary was a week ago last week. The worst thing is that for the first time, I didn’t care. I used to sacralize every second spent in her presence, or actually was able to do so at the beginning of our relationship. Today I cannot recall the year, the month, the day and the date of my wedding, the day that is supposed to be the happiest day in a man’s life, unless I had written in my diary and set a reminder for it.

Now pay attention, refocus! This is something I have been teaching them during morning obstacle course. Each time I get to this station, I think about the herd of cattle I felt as