There are exhibitions in front of which we lower our voices.
This weekend, I was in Paris with my family.
I went to see Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s exhibition Vivre Ensemble, on Place de la Concorde.
What struck me first was the beauty of the photos.
Absolutely magnificent.
But what touched me next was the audience.
The quiet reverence of visitors who stopped, read, looked in silence.
There was something almost meditative in the way everyone moved among the portraits.
As if, without speaking to one another, we were sharing a moment of what we have in common.
I later learned that the exhibition had been vandalised the day before.
And that people had spontaneously come together to restore it.
The exhibition’s message became even more powerful.
Living together was no longer just in the photos.
It was in the actions of those who had come to repair it.
In that refusal to let the exhibition end on this act of damage.
What struck me in these portraits was that everyone was beautiful.
They weren’t models, they weren’t perfect.
These people were beautiful because they were connected.
As families, as groups, in their work, in their history.
And I think that, in organisations too, we sometimes forget this simple question:
How are we connected?
Before roles, functions, tensions or disagreements…
I’m not talking about theory.
But rather about our actions, our words, the way we look at each other.
In those micro-gestures that show how we create a collective.
And in the way we repair things when something has been damaged.
Living together isn’t a value you put on display.
It’s a practice.
Fragile.
Everyday.
Never a given.
And when it appears, it makes everyone more beautiful.