Bérénice Vourdon

Whenever you do something, make sure you always take it seriously. Your future self will thank you for it.

This mindset would then stay with them all the way into adulthood, meaning that even when they did eventually possess the strength to break free from their chains, they remained convinced they couldn’t and wouldn’t even try. Psychologists often referred to this as “learned helplessness” or “baby elephant syndrome.”

—but just because she wanted to handle everything by herself, that didn’t mean she would be able to. That was the kind of thing I’d witnessed way more than was necessary at my previous job. People like her generally ended up breaking down at some point

“Where I come from, we have a saying: ‘Better to regret something you’ve done than regret not doing it at all.’”

But after having spent so many years in the same place, reading insatiably, I had learned many things; I itched to apply them. I wanted to tread the earth with my own feet, discover new sights with my own eyes, test myself against all its challenges with my own two hands.

“It’s not about race,” I said. “When people find themselves backed into a corner, they tend to cling onto whatever little hope they have left, and turn hostile against folk of the same race as their oppressors.”