There is no point in all A’s looking the same. Or: Perfection
An acquaintance of mine is a toolmaker. That profession is now extinct. Toolmakers worked in the metalworking industry. The profession developed within the context of industrialisation, when in addition to the usual tools, which were rather roughly worked, there was a need for tools that could meet special requirements. They were used, for example, in the field of metrology and were manufactured with a precision of a fraction of a millimetre.
The toolmakers of the early days learned to make these tools by hand to the highest perfection. In order to do this, one needs not only skill, highly honed fine motor skills and a good physical and mathematical understanding, but above all patience and perseverance. I imagine that the production of such a tool requires especially towards the end that the work is done finely, precisely and calmly to perfection — to completion.
My acquaintance is such a toolmaker of the early days and he is an outstanding person in many respects: his handwriting is razor-sharp and very small. When I look at the individual letters, I notice that all the same letters actually look the same. All capital A’s, for example, look the same and the spaces between letters and punctuation marks are set very precisely. Not all letters within a word are connected, there is always a small gap between an uppercase B and the following letter of the word.
This July I built myself a knife at a blacksmithing workshop. It took me two days. One day for the blade and another day for the handle made of mirabelle plum wood. The knife is as long as my forearm, the blade is very sharp and all in all it ended up quite decent for my first self-forged knife. But above all, one thing it is not: perfect! The upper part of the blade is wavy, there is a chip in the edge, the handle is not carved accurately on the blade side. The whole knife is not evenly balanced and too heavy to use it as a kitchen knife for a long period of time.
Forging is very demanding, sweaty and exhausting work. I spent the whole day hammering on a piece of steel with a hammer that weighed 1 kilogram. The time window for hammering is very small, because only when the steel is red-hot can it be worked. If it is left in the fire too long, it can break, and you may have to start all over again. If you have spent a day forging, every muscle in your whole body hurts and you cannot move your fingers properly anymore. While I was forging, I would go through phases of anger and sadness and the whole time I was about 15% afraid that the metal would break in the fire. In the end I was very happy. It is a very special, heavy, sharp and dangerous looking knife (it is important for me that it looks dangerous).
In my life I have often run out of patience towards the end. I started with a lot of enthusiasm and after 70% of the work was done, I abruptly lost interest and put the whole thing aside. Sometimes, however, it was exactly that 30% that would have been needed to bring the result to perfection. The 30% that would have ultimately raised the piece above the masses and turned it into a perfectly and precisely crafted piece from the hands of a master craftswoman, impossible to improve any further. All throughout my education and professional training, the teachers placed a great deal of emphasis on these last percentages of work and effort, and I don’t know how often my work was handed back with sentences like: “You began well. Why didn’t you keep working so perfectly until the end?”
For a long time, I used to think perfection was desirable. At school, my report card said that I had no perseverance and included sentences like: “Martina can when she wants to.” But Martina didn’t want to at first. She also did not understand why all A’s had to look the same and therefore got bad grades in penmanship. There must have been a moment in my life when I decided that what I want is not as important as what the others want. Because after those first few years of trouble in primary school something changed, and I was a very good student until the end of my schooling, professional training and university: all the A’s in my life were the same size!
I was sure that I could buy affection and love through good performance. And it did work. My parents were happy with me, there was no trouble, I got money for a good report card, recognition from friends, admiration and praise. I understood the message of our modern society very early: No pain, no gain. Work first, play later! There is no benefit without effort! Without effort, you don’t go far!
With the same way of thinking, I entered my first relationships with men. As long as I was beautiful, nice, smart (not as smart as him), caring, interested, devoted and fulfilling his every wish, he would not leave me, would he? In some relationships I believed — without thinking about it — I just had to avoid making any mistake. It was not relevant what I wanted, what I needed, if I was happy, what I thought, if I wanted to have sex and if I wanted to move to this city. I was content with the decision to agree, to submit to him and to be quiet.
This old survival strategy worked reasonably well. Until my then husband left me.
I lived alone for over a year, then the guys at ECCO (Earth Coincidence Control Office) arranged for me to meet a man I opened my heart to. And my survival strategy no longer worked. I couldn’t and wouldn’t shut up anymore. I wanted to say what I feel and think, I wanted to negotiate any form of intimacy, I wanted to say NO when I felt like it, go or stay, the way it felt right. With the attempt to do all this, enormous fears arose in me. My Box freaked out completely. I sometimes headed towards a panic attack, lost all grounding and gave away my centre. It seemed as if there was not a single part in me that I could rely on anymore.
In an emotional healing process, I was able to distil an old decision I had made when, at the age of a few months, I had almost suffocated in the belt of my cot. The sentence is “When I am alone, I die.” Such a healing process takes between 30 and 90 minutes and can lead to your life heading in a completely different direction than before. During this process I changed my mind and made a new decision: “I am imperfect and authentic!”
The fears didn’t go away for a while, they stuck to me like dog shit to the treaded sole of a shoe. I am writing this article in a kind of a liquid state, because I have gone through several of these emotional healing processes in the last few days and it feels like there are many layers that need to be peeled off. In the last process a few days ago I reached for the first time something like a thick layer of ice. All feelings suddenly went silent and were no longer accessible to me. I felt like dead. This is probably how I spent most of my life: cut off from my feelings and frozen inside.
I have decided to stop making weapons for the time being. I have, after all, built a dangerous looking knife and a sword. I intend to navigate from now on with fear, sadness and anger. Fear makes me be very attentive to little things, makes me be brave, awake and conscious, warns me and allows me to see what is happening around me even without using my eyes. Anger helps me to be clear, to separate myself, to say YES or NO, to decide, to end and to start things. Sadness shows me what I need, helps me be with others, slows down my movements and makes me aware of what I am doing. It helps me to accept and heal things.
Have you ever heard of the Pareto Principle; it is also called the 80/20 Rule? This rule says that 80% of the results can be achieved with 20% of the effort. To achieve the remaining 20% of the results, it takes 80% of the effort. This means that the largest part of the work by quantity would have to be used to achieve 20% of the results. In my opinion, in most situations it is sufficient and acceptable to achieve 80% of the results. After all, life does end at some point.
By the way: I met this man for the first time at the waterfalls of Gerats in Allgäu, southern Germany. It was a hot Friday afternoon and we were sitting on a wall and I was talking bullshit. We were both very nervous. What neither of us saw coming was a huge thunderstorm. It came up very abruptly in almost no time at all. (I assume the guys at ECCO were having a good time.) It started raining within 2 minutes, but those were no normal raindrops. They were the size of small frogs. If you know the waterfalls of Gerats, you know that it takes a few minutes to reach the car. Even walking very fast it takes at least three minutes. If raindrops the size of small frogs pelt down on you for three minutes, afterwards you look like someone has emptied five buckets of water above you. I was wet to the skin, my hair was sticking to my head and mascara was running down my face.
And suddenly everything was wonderfully imperfect…
