I recently became French. It was a most welcome commendation for the vexing administration efforts – five visa applications and renewals, and irretrievable hours queuing, pleading and, at one point, crying – drawn out over my 11 years of residency in France. It was the realisation of a lifelong aspiration: to have a second passport and specifically a French one. France has held a mythic appeal for me since early childhood and, while real life here is not entirely rose-tinted, I can’t conceive of anywhere that would suit me better.
The application process took about 18 nail-biting months. The ceremony should have been a watershed moment – but it wasn’t. My confirmation letter was waylaid in typical La Poste style and it arrived 48 hours before I was supposed to attend. The last-minute notice turned this symbolic transition into yet another item on my to-do list, wedged unceremoniously between a doctor’s appointment and the school pick-up. But what if I had received the letter in good time and been able to enjoy the anticipation of this moment?
Research suggests that my experience of it might have been very different. In 2007 academics Leaf Van Boven and Laurence Ashworth published a paper suggesting that anticipation – of any moment, big or small – arouses more intense emotions than retrospection. Other findings in the same field show that looking forward to a desired event can also help to make us happier and more positive.
For me, this sense of wild and enjoyable anticipation is especially strong around the summer holidays – a habit that formed because they were vast blocks of free time that bookended my school year when I was a child. Last year the allure of August helped me to survive my fourth pandemic-related confinement in steamy Paris. I felt sure that it would be monumental and from the confines of my home I went online, designing what I hoped would be a landmark summer of new horizons, fresh experiences and untold joy. The high that I gleaned from this yet-to-happen event proved to be more profound than the reality but both were delightful.
The French are very au fait with the enjoyment of anticipation and here the act of planning summer holidays can dominate the conversation from March onwards. France, after all, passed a law that guaranteed paid holidays in 1936. Perhaps this appreciation of anticipation also comes from the fact that so many people take them – compared to, say, in the US, where holidays are shorter and rights to them far from legislatively enshrined. It’s why the French do it so well. Booking holidays is also something of a blood sport; those in the know do so well in advance.
One potential rub of anticipation is that it perhaps favours the plan-makers and rigid sticklers more than the spontaneous – but there’s room in the world for the pleasures of both organising and leaving room for things to shift. Think of the joy of nabbing a booking for a big table at a restaurant that you have been dying to go to.
Paying attention to and anticipating the flux of life around us also hold great promise, whether you’re looking forward to evenings at a street-side table in your neighbourhood or a total escape to a windswept island that you’ve dreamed of visiting for years. “We need the sweet pain of anticipation to tell us we are really alive,” wrote Albert Camus. It’s a sentiment that I’m looking forward to examining on my next holiday, the first taken with my shiny, new French passport. After all that, it was well worth the wait.