Tuesday, March 6, 2007. 13:24. Berlin. Technical University Library. Sitting behind a rather ordinary, standard pale-green German desk for some time now, after numerous unsuccesful attempts to focus and be productive, I must admit that I have failed. Opposite of me, Sebastian is busy with electrical engineering problem solving and what they call – the rational world of mathematics (or so they* say). I am staring out the window which has now began to set off my mind on a tangent. Looking at the birds soaring above the smokestacks across the street, I can’t help it but think about Jonathan Livingston Seagull, a book that I have read many years ago ... Ironically, the more I think about it presently, the more its paradigm of perceiverance intrigues me. The question that I ask myself is – are we really in fact looking for pefection? Just the other day, I was sitting at the 103 café having this discussion with Sebastian. I asked myslef: what is it that really counts in life?
I suppose that throughout centuries humans have been customarily attached to material things, perhaps because they are simply more tangible and cohesive to the average mind. We take comfort in the five senses that we have, and we tend to cling on to things we can touch, taste, smell, hear, and see. However, what happens to those things that we cannot experience with our five senses; those things that are not made of brick and stone, those things that we cannot buy and those things that we simply cannot have any control over? Perhaps being limited and constrained within the realms of the five senses can make ordinary and everyday life much easier, but at the end of the day once we know that everything we see is tangible, there is no space left for belief, hope, or for their further quest. Perhaps I have been poking fun of Sebastian’s mathematics a bit too early, as I begin to question what happens to the whole world of the irrational out there? The world which is at many points incomprehendible, the world where belief is that first and only step in shining a light to the rest of it.
Essentially, it is nothing but fear that keeps us restrained to enter and explore the irrational, to do the unexplainable and incomrehendible. The five senses are nothing but an emergency break, a common constraint to which we so blindly abide by. It is them that blind us and limit us? When will we, like Jonathan, spread our wings and without fear of failure – reach perfection? How many falls does it take for us to realize who and what we are? How many falls does it take for us to be honest enough to ourselves to get up after a heavy fall, dust ourselves off and look at ourselves in the mirror? Only we know... because no one but ourselves is our worst and most sincere critic.
*For special reasons who they are will not be revealed nor discussed for the sake of general security
