Go Flip Yourself.

🌀 There some extremely meaningful pieces of wisdom in this 40 life lessons I know at 40 by Mark Manson. #40: IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO CHANGE is quite powerful:

A friend of mine once told me a story about his grandmother. He said that when her husband died, she was 62 and for the first time in her life, she began to take piano lessons.

For weeks, she practiced all day, every day.

At first, the family thought it was just a phase, a way for her to process her grief. But months went by and she continued to play every day.

People started to wonder if she was crazy or something was wrong with her. They told her to give it up, face reality. But she kept going.

By the time she was in her 90s, she’d been playing piano every day for over 30 years, longer than most professional musicians have been alive. She had mastered all of the classics—Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Vivaldi.

Everyone who heard her play swore that she must have been a concert pianist in her youth. No one believed her when she said that she took her first lesson in her 60s.

I love this story because it shows that even at an impractical old age, you still have more time left to learn something than most professionals at that thing have even been alive.

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While 'Le Monde' [big french newspaper] was publishing a 'no kids zone' article two weeks ago, we were in Switzerland and discovered a whole kids playground inside their train. A proper family dream on wheels.

Exploring the moon as an astronaut, diving into a jungle wilderness or experiencing the world of dinosaurs – there is no boredom during a train ride in Switzerland. All InterCity double-deck trains are equipped with a jungle style family coach marked “FA”. Mid-upper deck, these offer a playground with fanciful jungle motives for children to play and frolic around as much as they please. Additionally, exciting board games such as “Jungle Hunt” and “Snake Game” have been installed on the upper decks of family coaches. The playing pieces for those board games can be obtained from SBB restaurant/bistro.

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💼 Hermės story is unique and Acquired did an awesome job to encapsulate it. Stewarded by one French family over six generations, Hermès sells the absolute pinnacle of the French luxury dream.

My own relationship with Hermès started very early since my mom’s best friend when I was young [from my 5 to 12 year old] was working in the atelier near Lyon, France where they were making silk scarves.

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I spent last week in Zermatt with the kids, Mathilde and some friends. I'm lucky enough a close school friend of mine has a flat over there. This little swiss town is amazingly beautiful. Constantly dominated by the Matterhorn.

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🚗 I almost cried reading this manifesto: the car will be unbundled. And - obviously - I can’t agree more with the conclusion.

This manifesto is a call to use our superpower to make moving better.

Better by getting there happier, healthier and more in harmony.

In harmony with our environment and with each other.

👕 I’ve followed Bobby for my time in LA more than a decade ago now. So reading him talking about the power of ‘enough’ made me truly, genuinely, happy. Because yes, this is something we hope to spread more with Objet too.

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♟ Because we might all be status-seeking monkey anyway [as suggested by Eugene in Status as a Service] and because “at the same time, taste games are supposed to be human nature.” This post is definitely a must-read: Taste Games.

⚜️ Found out this wonderful manifesto lately: a call for friction in digital culture.

With movement comes friction. The more we move and act, the more friction we encounter. The more friction there is, the more we engage and care. Friction drives our engagement. Friction, in this context, is neither synonymous with anger or conflict, nor is it malfunctioning technology. Friction is an essential ingredient that makes up our humanness and sparks human connection. Friction is thus a lively, intrinsic experience.

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🆕🛒 That one feels very special to me. Alongside my partners in crime Max and Mathilde we published “LE NEW CONSUMER” manifesto. With Objet we are working on a joyful system that will enhance and reward new consumers’ behaviours and actions, online and offline. This mission is thrilling. And huge. We won’t do this alone.

It’d mean the world to me if you’re signing this manifesto [if it resonates of course]. CO-SIGN.

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I read something yesterday mentioning LEGO and their exceptional rebound, 20 years after being near bankrupt when they were close to 1 billion dollars in debt. I instantly thought: they deserve their spot in the cockroaches page. Which then sent me back down the memory lane and their incredibly rich story.

Memory lane cause we spent a day at Legoland in The Hague last Xmas. The kids loved the place, obviously. Mathilde and I were disappointed but I'd say it's more because we were expected something more 'grandiose' - a la Disneyland - than just the space not being cool. It still reminded us countless hours of playing with bricks coming from our parents childhood. Our own kids are now crazy about it. I spent a few hours the other day building with them a 15-bedroom house for all their super-heroes toys.

A few month ago we spent a weekend at some very close friends house and the guy is still obsessed with LEGO. He got a whole collection of old cars, sport ones, the Millennium Falcon and other artefacts in his basement, proudly displayed next to his collection of wine. It's pretty impressive.

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👧👦 It feels like I’ve been on a ‘kids spree’ lately. Maybe this is the ‘I want to be a better Dad’ thought kicking in. It started with Henrik’s great recommendation — following my own ‘Our relationship to children’ — Derek Sivers asking: Who is parenting really for?

Because I realized that the parenting things I do for him are also for myself. And that’s an idea worth sharing.

PG detail some of the lies we [adults] tell kids. He starts with ‘Protection’:

If you ask adults why they lie to kids, the most common reason they give is to protect them. And kids do need protecting. The environment you want to create for a newborn child will be quite unlike the streets of a big city.

That theme fits perfectly with Etienne’s take on ‘risky play’. I can’t agree more with him when he writes:

society has moved towards an overabundance of caution around kids

I do have many stories to tell here. I also think there is an asymmetry of caution between the physical and online world.

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Since kids go to school only in the morning on Wednesdays, my routine is to drop them off and then head to a nice coffee shop in the neighborhood before picking them up and heading back home to have lunch. I really like spending some time observing people in the coffee. And everytime, I'm quite disturbed by the omnipresence of our smartphones.

Typically yesterday, due to noise that was bothering me and a few loud discussions I didn't want to follow, I took out the earpods and started listening to music. While doing it, I realised how I was [intentionally in that case] disconnecting myself from the surroundings. I was putting myself in a 'physical bubble'.

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