As a performance-oriented athlete, I strive to do my best and keep on improving every day. Optimising my performance, mental abilities and materials are part of my daily life. Every piece of the puzzle is analysed, optimised or replaced if necessary, until a hopefully perfect whole emerges. Although this process of optimisation and striving for perfection is an important factor in my success, I must nevertheless acknowledge that, while I can get as close as possible to perfection, it remains an unachievable illusion. I will always find new areas that I could improve, thus completing the overall picture.
It is a particularly exciting moment for me as a sportsman when I am on the starting line and have to give myself up to a certain extent to the uncontrollable fate that awaits. In this moment, I have to adapt to the circumstances and the actions of my competitors, react flexibly and be prepared for the unexpected. An important task for me as an athlete is to work out various strategies and options for reacting to the situations that arise. I must also learn to accept that things will not always go as I imagine. I need to accept mistakes and material defects and come to terms with defeats.
We are all forced to cope with the unpredictability of life at some point. This insight has taught me to let go of certain things and remain calm, even if that means abandoning something completely.
As humans, we often strive to make things available to ourselves and achieve perfection. We want to bring events on this earth under our control and improve, master and direct them – including ourselves. In all of this, we are driven by a desire for optimisation, perfection and progress and motivated by our need to achieve success, security and comfort and by the fear of inadequacy.
In this age of social media, we spend more and more time marketing ourselves and collecting “ratings” in the form of likes. We present ourselves in a certain way, usually showing only our best side to ourselves and our world. As a result, we also tend to deny, hide or correct any flaws or shortcomings we might have. In addition, adverts constantly suggest to us that we are missing something or that we need this or that product or service to make up for some shortcoming in our lives. This is even apparent in our attitude to food, when we throw away supposedly imperfect fruit or vegetables or declare them to be “second class”. What do we conclude from this about the mindset of people who do not consider themselves to be perfect – or of people with disabilities?
If we stop constantly trying to correct our deficiencies, it can give us a degree of freedom. In a society that is obsessed with optimisation, flawless happiness and perfect ideals, however, this is easier said than done. It often takes courage, composure and plenty of self-confidence to stand up for ourselves and our supposed flaws.
Yet human beings are full of flaws. This is already true from the moment we are born. No other mammal comes into this world so “incomplete”. Dogs, dolphins and monkeys can already move and find their way around shortly after birth, yet we humans only learn to crawl and eventually walk very slowly.
As I see it, there’s no such thing as completeness or absolute perfection, neither in humans nor in nature as a whole. However, this should not be confused with the state of being finished. Everything is dynamic and in a state of flux. The only constant in our lives is change. Things come into being and pass again; they pulsate, develop and transform. We are born and we die. Perfection, on the other hand, would require a static element. In this ever more rapidly changing world, it would do us good to focus more on improvisation than on perfection. The world around us is perfectly imperfect, so we don’t need to be perfect ourselves either. Perfection can sometimes be boring. In many cases, it is precisely our imperfections that make us lovable and unique. Mistakes and supposed flaws are part of life and should not be glossed over. Anyone who recognises that will lead a considerably more relaxed life.
A cure for paraplegia
Of course research into paraplegia is desirable and worthy of support – with a view to one day enabling a cure or at least further improving paraplegics’ quality of life. At the same time, however, we should be cautious not to get too caught up in the “repairing mentality”. I find it regrettable, for example, that at some (not all!) fundraising events for people with disabilities or spinal cord research, I am left with the faint sensation that disabilities are a terrible fate to suffer and that they absolutely MUST be cured. It often feels like the “healthy” people are wanting to do a “good deed” for those “poor disabled people”, thus creating an additional dependency. It is crucial to recognise that a disability is not necessarily a deficit. Sometimes it is simply an attribute, and some people cannot or do not want to be “healed”. The focus should not be solely on healing disabilities; instead, it should also include our surroundings and issues like accessibility and equality. Adapting our surroundings in particular would benefit the whole of society. If you replace a flight of steps with a ramp, for example, this is also more practical for older people using Zimmer frames and parents with prams.
“A disability is neither a problem to be solved nor a deficit; it is simply an attribute and an expression of human diversity.”
Kintsugi – the Japanese art of accepting our own vulnerability
Humans are vulnerable, mortal beings. The fact that there can also be beauty and appeal in this supposed imperfection is something I learned in Japan, a country that fascinates me and whose culture I cherish. It was there that I got to know the ancient and wonderful craft of kintsugi. A longstanding Japanese tradition of repairing broken pottery, kintsugi is the Japanese path to resilience and the art of recognising the beauty of imperfection. Broken and cracked ceramic pieces are repaired in a time-consuming process made up of several stages. To do this, Japanese urushi lacquer is applied in several layers, dusted with gold or silver pigments and then polished.
Kintsugi does not attempt to conceal the apparent flaws with the repair work. Instead, the pigments in the lacquer actually bring these to the fore – thereby creating a completely new beauty and appreciation for the original object. Kintsugi is based on wabi-sabi, an aesthetic centred around the idea of finding beauty in the impermanent, the old and the imperfect. A once broken teacup is worth no less than a flawless new one. In fact, the laborious restoration process gives the old cup a unique and barely quantifiable value. Just as we view the broken cup as so valuable that should invest a lot of time and effort in repairing it rather than simply throwing it away, so we can also decide to look after ourselves lovingly and kindly. What kintsugi teaches us is that we can recompose ourselves after strokes of misfortune and that we will not necessarily emerge from them weaker. The ancient craft is a time-consuming, multi-stage process. It requires acceptance, care, concentration and patience – just like a physical and mental healing process.
In a world of constant change in which nothing is static, we should concentrate on accepting and appreciating ourselves and our imperfections. Striving for perfection can often stop us from enjoying life in all its beauty and uniqueness. By acknowledging and honouring our imperfections, we can lead more fulfilled and authentic lives.
“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” Leonard Cohen