Thursday evening. The weekend is still untouched.

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I. The Place

The Fauconnière calanque

There are places one must earn, and this is one of them. It is reached only at the cost of a long walk, along steep paths that discourage the hurried. Perhaps that is why one still finds peace here, even on a summer afternoon.

The path itself is the first gift. One feels one is travelling with each step: the light resting on the cliffs, the blue of the sea that pierces the gaze. One moves slowly, one looks, one falls silent. On arrival, the water is so clear it makes you forget the walk — and one understands why no one, ever, raises their voice here.

Make no mistake: nothing here is watched over. The cliffs are there, the risk of falling too, and the signal abandons you at the very first switchbacks. One comes accompanied, never in the evening, and one leaves before the light fades.

The right moment

July–August: the walk already filters the crowd, the hour does the rest.

How to hold yourself here

Accompanied, shod for walking and for the water — the sea urchins keep the entrance.

↳ The exact route — 28 stages, scouting photographs to hand, measured distances — lives behind the door.

II. The Knowledge

The paradox of progress

Never have we lived so long, so well cared for, so educated, so sheltered. The average European lives better, materially, than royalty did two centuries ago. And yet never have depression and anxiety been so widespread. This is no old man’s evening impression: it is one of the most disturbing findings of contemporary research, and it has a name — the paradox of progress.

As early as 1974, the economist Richard Easterlin observed it: over the long term, a country’s growth does not increase the declared happiness of its inhabitants. Fifty years of data have proved him right — the World Happiness Report 2026, published by Oxford, measures that fifteen industrialised countries have seen their happiness decline since 2010, with the United States, Switzerland and Canada leading the way. More of everything, less joy.

The mechanisms are known. Habituation, first: every improvement — a salary, a house, an object — offers a peak of satisfaction that fades within a few months. Psychologists speak of the « hedonic treadmill »: one runs, and the landscape does not change. Comparison, next: happiness is measured less by what one has than by what others have — and when everyone grows richer together, no one rises. Our screens have industrialised this old poison: the 2026 report, devoted to social media, shows that the streams of images have caused a full point’s drop in happiness among those under 25 in the Anglo-Saxon countries. A comparison machine, running day and night.

A glimmer, nonetheless, in the same pages: the countries of Latin America, as connected as we are, hold firm. Their secret is not economic. It lies in the shared tables, the families, the bonds — everything the economy does not measure.

The conclusion holds in a single line, and it is that of this house: progress is not to blame — we ask of it what it cannot give. Happiness does not accumulate, it is lived. Clear water earned by walking, a cliff path without signal, an afternoon without photographs: such goods do not wear thin when one grows used to them, because one never possesses them. One lives them — and one must return.

III. The Word

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This is what you receive, every Thursday. The rest must be earned.

Introduce yourself