Constantly looking back is the habit of an old man worn down by life. At least, that is what I believed for many years. Overly demonstrative nostalgia, and even outright attachment to the past, makes me uncomfortable. That might have seemed paradoxical for someone embarking on the path you already know.
I did not dwell on it, for I had so many other motivations that seemed far more promising. Although the surprise and praise prompted by my initiative most often reflected a backward-looking view, nostalgia itself remained entirely foreign to me. I looked only ahead.
Certain realities of the trade nevertheless concerned me. The upholsterers who were customers of the business were hardly young. Some had sailed well past the statutory retirement age.
Objectively, this made the future of my company vulnerable. It was profitable, certainly, but how long could that last with such an aging clientele?
According to my analysis, this should not have been a problem. I saw that very aging as the main reason the trade had fallen into decline.
The wool mattress needed to move with society if it was to become a product for the future again, or at least halt its slow loss of market share. That was absolutely essential.
Traditional bedding also embodied values that were increasingly in favor, or so I believed. It needed only a fresh impetus to become relevant again. All I had to do was provide it.
My “old” upholsterers did not, of course, see matters in quite the same way.
In fairness, the Faubourg Saint-Antoine they had known in their youth was an entirely different place. It was an extraordinary hive of activity: anyone who left a job during the day could find another by the following morning. Suppliers, subcontractors, jobbing workshops—there were legions of shops of every size, everywhere: at the back of courtyards, down passageways, opening directly onto the street, or on upper floors. Not the smallest attic went unused, even if only for storage. With a little courage and enough perseverance, anyone could establish a respectable place there.
Only a few ruins remained of that faubourg, and I could understand their bitterness. They had learned to struggle only with materials and tools. The sole horizon before them was the result produced by their own hands, and their lifelong challenge was the pride of work well done. The world around them no longer made much sense.
Battered by all these new forms of adversity, they gradually gave in to resentment. That was no doubt why their outlook so often struck me as narrow.
Some of them exasperated me beyond measure. One day, when he learned that I was taking over the business—the arrangement was still unofficial then—a venerable upholsterer shook my hand warmly and congratulated me. “You know,” he added, “I had no idea where I would have the mattresses of my few remaining bedding customers remade. Hold on for another two or three years, until I retire.” After him, the deluge!
As I spent more time in this new world, however, an entirely different relationship with work revealed itself. At first, I regarded it all with a little contempt. Seeing men old enough to be my great-grandfather still at work was surprising, to say the least. What drove them? Greed? Fear of boredom? A lack of imagination?
Gradually, the terms of an equation far more complex than I had first imagined became clearer. It included a little of all those things, but many others as well. They collided to produce a state of affairs utterly opposed to the mainstream.
One day, I finally had to admit it: unlike most people today, furniture craftspeople did not spend their lives desperately waiting for retirement. Quite the opposite!
Comfortably settled into life, without the artificial boundaries so vainly erected between private and professional life, they suffered none of the needless turmoil that disturbs the peace of everyday existence.
Why should they have hung up their tools while they still felt perfectly fit? And fit they certainly were. Many other older people lose their freedom little by little as soon as moving becomes difficult, eventually sinking into near-total dependence. These men, by contrast, remained ready for anything: carrying, pulling, hammering, driving, enjoying an aperitif, and treating themselves to a fine lunch.
A loyal employee, often someone who had joined the business as an apprentice years before, took care of the less appetizing parts of the trade. The old craftsman had forced himself to do them for years, but now he had simply stopped. He was too old to put up with that nonsense. They were not necessarily the hardest tasks, although some were difficult, nor were they always the most thankless. They were simply the jobs that had irritated him for far too long.
Slowly, as the young apprentice gained experience, the old master imperceptibly loosened his grip. Trust and balance timidly developed. Still certain that he remained the backbone of his workshop, the craftsman nevertheless acquired a more leisurely air.
Customers sometimes paid the price. If the craftsman was even slightly hot-tempered, it did not take much to provoke him. Yet the clientele was loyal, and the best customers had often become friends as well.
A doctor once told me that the human body is a machine that wears out only when it is not used. Watching my elders, I could only agree.
I nevertheless believe that the maxim needs amending: the human body is a machine that wears out only when it is used too little—or too much.
Think of the industrial workers of earlier times: mines, blast furnaces, twelve-hour days, six-day weeks. By forty, a man was already exhausted, worn out, almost finished.
Even today, we need only look at what becomes of elite athletes to appreciate the importance of taking at least a few precautions to protect ourselves.
Without even realizing it, the old upholsterers had made this principle their own. Well into old age, they remained at their posts while waiting for a trusted second-in-command to take the helm for good.
Despite their nostalgia for earlier days and their bitterness at upheavals they had neither wanted nor managed to resist, they remained lively. Unlike a cult of youth concerned only with appearances, they resisted age through an inner effort. Staying young at heart was the secret.
Before embarking on this adventure, meanwhile, I had barely reached the threshold of forty when I became a “senior.” My business cards read “Senior Executive Manager.” The message could hardly have been clearer: an engineer’s career lasted little more than a dozen years.
For the first few years, you were a novice. You had scarcely grown accustomed to having enough experience when you entered the senior category, as though you were already being nudged toward the exit.
Imagine my surprise, then, when customers welcomed me as I took charge of the workshop—almost as a savior, certainly, but above all as someone YOUNG.
They were truly amazed. The prospect of anyone carrying on the business had seemed increasingly unlikely, but the arrival of a young person felt like a genuine miracle. The most optimistic among them almost began to believe in a glorious revival. In less than a year, I had grown nearly fifteen years younger.
That was fifteen years ago. Since then, people like those old masters have all but disappeared.
As new constraints have piled endlessly upon one another, incomes have eroded, and rents, supplies, and every variety of overhead have grown more expensive, today’s upholsterers have lost faith.
Every official speech about social security deficits and every reform of the pension system makes them tremble. For years now, as they look toward their own retirement, each week worked seems to add another three months before they can leave.
They entered working life while still children, and their resentment is understandable. All it takes is for a sandwich chain or real estate agency to offer a good price for their lease. The door has barely opened before they rush through it.
Only a few years earlier, those same people would have told you in no uncertain terms where to go at the mere suggestion of retirement.
All that remains behind is the loyal employee, deprived of any hope of easily setting up on his own and forced to register at the employment office. In a society that accepts only sprinters, these craftspeople may be the last long-distance runners.