The reader might think I’m a bit obsessive with my references to Jean-Paul Sartre. The truth is, there’s something in his reasoning that really resonates with me. I spoke about Sartre in the brushstroke 3, where I tried to express the idea that in Canoe Slalom, potential performance doesn’t exist—in sporting terms, we are only what we are in competition.
Back to today’s topic: there’s something rarely said, yet it defines the life of a high-performance athlete with brutal honesty—we live thinking about what’s missing.
Not about what’s here. Not about what we’ve achieved. But about what hasn’t happened yet.
And that—though it might not seem like it—is deeply philosophical. Jean-Paul Sartre captured it in a phrase that may sound abstract, but in this context, feels deeply real: man is what he is not and is not what he is. What does that mean? That our identity doesn’t end with what we are now, but is constantly being shaped by what we aspire to become.
We live projected forward, toward a future version of ourselves that doesn’t yet exist. And that inevitably creates anxiety.
More than anyone, the high-level athlete embodies this structure. Every day they wake up knowing they must improve, that what was done yesterday isn’t enough, that there’s a new threshold to reach. That’s the essence of elite sport: to always fall short of oneself. There is no identity rest. You can’t say, “this is what I am” — because sport, like existence, is movement, transcendence, lack.
But this comes at a cost.
Living focused on what you are not—on the distance between who you are and who you want to be—generates anxiety. Frustration. A sense of insufficiency. Sometimes even a kind of detachment: you get lost in what’s missing and forget what’s already there. You lose sight of your own progress, unable to recognize how much you’ve changed because your gaze is always fixed on what hasn’t yet been achieved.
And here’s what matters: that anxiety is normal. It’s part of this way of life. It’s not a sign of weakness, but the existential face of desire, of commitment to a goal that never fully settles. Recognizing it doesn’t make you weaker; on the contrary, it makes you more human.
Maybe, from time to time, it’s worth stopping and looking back. Not to settle, but to realize that this “self-in-lack” has also walked a long path. And that this lack, this tension, is not a flaw, but the very condition of freedom. The ability to choose yourself, every day, despite everything.
Embrace that anxiety—because it is your freedom. Long live your freedom!
