The Panacea of Brother John

And then one day, everything smoothed out. Not thanks to a drug, not thanks to a therapy, not thanks to a belief: thanks to a simple method, one I'd searched for all my life without finding it, and which came down to two words. Exercise, diet — that's all, and it's easy. So simple that no one, in everything I'd come across, had thought to offer it to me just like that.

I want to be clear about what you're holding in your hands, because it changes the way you read it. This isn't a forty-page manual out of nowhere, an impersonal instruction sheet mass-produced on an assembly line. It's a life story. What I'm giving you, and what you'll be able to apply in five minutes, is in fact a whole life condensed: mine, with its traps, its false leads and its way out. Forty years spent walking in the desert — when, if someone had handed me this map earlier, it would have saved me a great many detours.

Here's the new idea, the one that surprised me most. A character flaw, in order to express itself, needs energy. When your flaws come out, spill over, take up all the room, it's simply because your body has the energy to feed them.

Cynicism goes the same way, and I care about this because it's a precise point. Cynicism, deep down, is a hypertrophy: a mind that has to deploy a surplus of energy to twist things constantly, to crack heavy jokes, often aggressive, often wounding. When the body is running lean, the brain stops churning out those twisted ideas by the dozen. And mind you, that doesn't mean you become dull — quite the opposite. The humour stays; it simply becomes genuine, lighter, less acid. You still laugh, but you no longer laugh at other people's expense.

Thierry Casasnovas, first. I love the man, and I say so without hedging.

Irène Grosjean, next. The raw soups, I get them from her, I didn't invent them — a bowl of raw blended vegetables that stands in for a whole meal, that really fills you up, without your needing to cook a thing afterward to feel you've arrived. Before I discovered her, I'd never have believed it possible.