An introspection: Yesterday I listened to the conversation between Olaf Zimmermann and myself on Radioeins. I literally sank to the floor over my “um” arias in some passages. And immediately the inner dialog: “How embarrassing was that? Why didn’t you come close to living up to your claim of perfect content, argumentation and rhetorical form?”
One day later, the question: Why do we all want to be perfect all the time (in our thinking, our actions, our appearance, in everything?
Answer: Because we want to meet external expectations, which from childhood onwards have also become our inner expectations, i.e. the expectations we have of ourselves.
But also because we are comparative beings and the media provide us with an abundance of perfect (pull-off) images. How this “formal,
We know that everyone has their own brilliant, unmistakable qualities. They flash up in some moments and sometimes the opposite is the case. C`est la vie … but accepting this about ourselves (and others) is difficult.
We’d rather be infected by the perfection continuum, which always comes across in the media in this hysterical, good-humored, well-oiled, highly polished uniform gloss.
Peculiarities, quirks, pauses, uncertainties, helplessness, pauses, mistakes, slips of the tongue, fears, discomfort should be avoided as far as possible.
But it is precisely this (John Cage called it “imperfections” and dedicated an entire series of compositions to the subject) that makes the wonderful, surprising, inspiring, free in human exchange and in life as a whole!
Being able to see yourself as you are, as a whole, with all the light and shadows present, and consequently feeling neither superior nor inferior to others (neighbors, friends, colleagues, fellow citizens, countries, cultures, peoples, animals and plants), seems to me to be the gateway to a successful life.