© imago/Gerhard König
“I stopped reading newspaper articles quite some time ago” was Ralf´s answer to my question how he is handling the public pressure as a professional soccer player. Week by week, newspapers published rather poor school grades rating the latest performance of the players. Even if the team won the match, the grades did not exceed an average “satisfactory”. If they lost, the rating of the press was devastating. It happened that overambitious soccer fans shouted at us out of the passing car on a Sunday afternoon: “You better go practicing, idiot”. On a date night out, it was quite likely that another guest had reported Ralf´s amusement already the next morning to the responsibles at the soccer club. Being a soccer professional did not leave much space for anything else. And for a long time, this was just right for Ralf.
“I first need to achieve something, before I can do something good to myself”
Ralf was 24 when we first met. Three quarter of his life he had focused on playing soccer. His passion for the soccer ball, his unfaltering will and his impressive adaptability brought him all to way to the pitches of the UEFA Cup. To get that far he had to learn one thing in particular: to set aside his (other) own needs and desires. He barely attended family occasions such as birthday, weddings or funerals, as they mainly happened on weekends and were coinciding with league games. Reading for hours, playing tennis, spending time with friends, experiencing life: All things he planned to catch up with after he had achieved something useful.
This is a smart approach. But Ralf is a perfectionist. And a perfectionist is never satisfied with what he/she has reached. There is always something better, something more perfect. So it was inevitable that Ralf had to realize one day, that he would not be able to achieve something useful as a soccer player. As a consequence, he set himself new (academic) goals. With his farewell to the public life of a soccer player he also expected the pressure to perform would reduce. Not before a few years later, during his PhD studies, it appeared, that this was not the case.
As PhD student there are no demanding coaches, no omnipresent reporters or ambitious fans constantly sharing their high expectations towards Ralf. Nonetheless, Ralf still felt he had to be better than he was (from his perspective). And this time, the pressure came from someone he had taken from his time as a professional soccer player to the present days: Himself – the perfectionist. To achieve something useful and to be perfect, he believed to still lack many abilities and experiences. Any achievement – Bachelor degree, Master degree, a happy marriage – lost its glamor as soon as he reached it himself. He adapted his understanding of something useful again and moved his personal goals farther out of reach.
I am as good as I can currently be.
I was ready to temporarily leave everything behind (for traveling) and Ralf was ready to take everything up (for his career development). My urge to set out was directly competing with Ralf´s desire to achieve something useful. Traveling did not belong to it. Not yet. On our daily bike ride to work we exchanged numerous – sometimes exhausting – dialogues about our dreams and fears, who we want to be and what it means to be an adult. To Ralf being an adult included to have an answer to each problem, to not fear anything and to have both feet on the ground. Only by having reached that, we can follow our own needs and reward ourselves for the hard work. As teenagers we considered those above 20 als grown-ups, later those above 30. In the meantime we both have passed the dreaded age of 30 and had to realize, that we cannot continue to say “later” (apart from the biological limits).
We had already experienced a lot and achieved quite a bit. But would we ever by satisfied, ever good enough or even adult? Or would the hunt for something perfect or useful always be aimless or even useless? A wise person taught us during that time that we are just as good as we can currently be – not more, and especially not less. And so it happened that Ralf said to me a couple of weeks and thoughts later: “I believe being an adult means, to take on responsibility for myself and my behavior – also for the less adult part of myself.”
Ralf received this postcard from me to his 30th birthday. The words “We should stop earlier to say later” became a central phrase in the following years.
So we started to take on the responsibility for who we are now. We started to accept the immature in us as part of the adult, to perceive our mistakes not as disgrace but as an opportunity to grow, and our inner desires not as something egoistic but as something worth striving for. Together, we detached from the supposed expectations of our environment (to be error free, to have a gap-less career path, etc.) and are daring now, to stop earlier to say “later” and to do something just for ourselves.
I believe that before this time, Ralf would have joined that trip only because of me. Now he is doing it also because of him.
The journey is the reward.
In 10 days Ralf will defend his PhD thesis. In my view, however, he has already reached this milestone. Ralf, a former professional soccer player who always understood the reward as the reward (i.e. to win a game) transformed his journey to be the reward. He learned to occasionally set aside his inner perfectionist in order to be take the responsibility for his own needs and values. His mother recently wrote to me “To me, he is the one who can acquire and understand everything, who passes everything with excellence and who shows power and enthusiasm for all that he does.” That in our view Ralf has already reached something useful seems to be obvious. That he will see this similarly in 10 days is what he has acquired himself the most in the last couple of years.
A love letter on the occasion of Ralf’s PhD defense on April 25, 2018.