Till_Kissel

I'm a 21-year-old male, and I live in Münster, Germany .

I speak German, Italian and some English

Current level: Regular

• 1m

• Something to tell the world!

  Hello to everybody out there!
  My name's Till, I'm 21 years old and I study Medicine at the University of Münster.
  I grew up in a little village near Wismar at the Baltic Sea with my two brothers Jakob and Mats.
  

• I recently learnt...

  Life is a precious gift, but its value is not measured in time.

  "Life" is not so easy to define. In fact, there is still no universally accepted definition. Feel free to google it, you will find different and sometimes quite interesting attempts. But one thing is certain: it's finite. What lives will also pass away. And whether we like it or not, this doesn't just apply to herring gulls and eider ducks. Thinking about death is uncomfortable. And even if you courageously confront your own finiteness - it remains difficult to think about it. In addition to the inner reluctance, there is also, to a certain extent, a technical impossibility: consciousness cannot imagine not being.
  The boundaries of our perception are quite narrow. I can't even hear the calls of bats, although of course they exist. And in the brain that I dissected during the pathology class, I didn't find the following: A thought. A feeling. A dream.

  Being in and with nature helps me to deal with my own finiteness. Of course, I don't know what happens to me one day. But I know that it is good for me not to be completely disconnected from becoming and passing away, not even during my flourishing lifetime. It's part of it. In fact, it's what makes us who we are. And this is also a reason why we should respect the nature around us: it gives us a context that may not answer the great question of life, but which can help us to endure it.

• A personal challenge

  I had a twin brother. His name was Jakob.
  Jakob was a real high-flyer. Top marks, prizes at "Jugend forscht", great successes in biathlon. He didn't like to hear any of that. Jakob was reluctant to be the center of attention, preferring to stay in the background. He had a large circle of friends and was class representative. He liked to talk to our father for hours about scientific topics. Jakob loved that. After graduating from high school, he wanted to study philosophy and mathematics. Actually, everything could have been so easy. Actually.

  Jakob was the firstborn. He was the son who succeeded in everything. Who fulfilled everything that was expected of him. Graduated from high school with brilliant grades, an ace in sports. Why this punishment? And if one son had to be taken from my parents, why this one, why not the other?

  Jakob and Till. That's what they called us. Back when she finally, finally had us at home. We are so-called seven-month children. This happens sometimes with twins. They are simply born far too early. We were tiny and spaghetti-thin when we were born in the middle of a very hot August night. Nevertheless, Jakob immediately managed to breathe on his own. That's how it has always been with Jakob. He was tough and did the craziest things.
  And what about me? They put me very carefully in an incubator and hung me on a lot of tubes, they gave me infusions every day, they watched me with eagle eyes, my parents prayed for me and stroked me through a glove handle in the incubator, they finally even flew me by helicopter to a distant children's hospital, and when they had almost given up on me, when Jakob was already lying in his warming bed, quite fidgety, I finally decided to live.
  Four months after we were born, they put Jakob next to me in the cot for the first time, just for the moment of a twin photo. The photo is on my father's desk. Even today. Jakob and Till.

• Making the world a better place

  They say: A hero is someone who is willing to risk his own life for others. Who saves people from a burning house, even if he dies in the flames. Who disarms a hijacker, even if he gets shot. Who closes the leak of a sinking ship, even if he drowns.

  You could say: A hero is someone who makes decisions after recognizing their urgency. Who accepts the consequences, no matter what they look like. Because he can't do anything else.

  Perhaps you could also say: A hero is someone who does not deny the doubts that are hidden in everything we do. Who is ready to look into his own abyss, no matter what he will see there. Who laughs when it's time to laugh and cries when it's time to cry. And leaves when it's time to say goodbye.

  My brother Jakob said: I am me and the others are the others.
  He said: I only have this one life. Then he left.

  My brother was a hero.

• My parents and me

  My father has never said many words at home. He just doesn't want a fight. Not at home, not in the family. This is the unspoken agreement between my mother and him. He lets her talk and swallows down all what he thinks.
  My brother Jakob and I have often wondered if he is afraid of her and how much a person can swallow. Normally he's not like that. If one of his employees orders the wrong medication in the practice or makes mistakes when writing prescriptions, he gets angry and yells. Then my mother is the one who is silent. The paediatric practice is his realm, he is the boss there. As soon as he takes off his white doctor's coat, he keeps his mouth shut. Jakob called this the "Big Lie." For him, our house was like a house of cards. "It's all cardboard," he said, "and if you blow on it, it will fall over."
  Jakob was my twin brother. And my Mum's little prince. When she hugged him goodbye, in the morning before he went to school, she had to stand on tiptoe. He was a head taller than her. She grabbed him by the neck and pulled him down to her. His hunched back when she kissed him on the cheek. He never complained about it, but it was clear how little he liked it. She didn't notice it. She didn't want to notice it.
  From now on my Mum will kiss me. A lame substitute and yet the only one she has. My parents have never compared me to my brother. There was no reason to do so. The roles were clearly defined. Jakob was the sun of my parent's universe and I was spinning around somewhere in his shadow. I was invisible. From now on, I am no longer invisible. From now on, my parents will compare me to Jakob. And they will be disappointed because what they're going to see isn't what they want to see.