FINDING YOUR OWN LIMITS

Crossing the German border into Austria, I see an old border station. A reminder of a border that was once clearly visible. The modern border is a line on my car's navigation screen. The border is physical and imaginary at the same time. The station is real, as is the vignette I purchased to be able to drive on this road. But the border is also imaginary because the road continues. Just like the river that runs besides the road and the mountains it crosses. I open my phone and see reels of athletes pushing boundaries ,kite surfers pulling their kites into a “double loop”, skiers making virtually vertical descents, and runners breaking world records.

Those images and reals are contagious. The limit of what is physically and mentally possible seems to be being pushed every single day. But what does that have to do with us? Boundaries make one curious and also inquisitive. It takes guts, creativity, and skill to push boundaries. You can't help but tap into your own potential to learn new skills. The world seems to change faster than ever. What you know now may be old news tomorrow. More than ever, flexibility is needed to adapt to an ever-changing world.

The inspiration of athletes pushing boundaries are therefore a metaphor for our own lives. I don't jump off mountains either, I don't hang 30 meters in the air from a kite, that's not the point either. The question we have to ask ourselves is whether we dare to go off the known road, think outside the box, whether we dare to find new ways of doing things we used to do in a certain way, whether we know our own limits, and if these are real or are imaginary. In the end, we don't have a perfectly marked roadmap of our own lives, with a border station.

Good luck with the exploration!

Greetings, Mark Tuitert