On 9 August 1173, in Pisa, the first stone was laid for what was meant to be a perfect bell tower: tall, straight, proud. But beneath the site lay soft, sandy, water-logged clay, and within a few metres the tower had already begun to lean. A flaw, a fault in the ground the builders never fully managed to correct. And yet today no one remembers the thousand straight, perfect towers of that age: we remember this one, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, precisely for the tilt that should have been its failure.
Something similar happens with us, only in reverse. We tend to hide whatever feels crooked inside us — a fragility, an insecurity, a side we can’t control — convinced it makes us less worthy. In 2018, psychologists Anna Bruk, Sabine Scholl and Herbert Bless gave this a name in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: the beautiful mess effect. Across a series of experiments they found that when we are the ones showing vulnerability — apologising first, admitting we’re afraid, confessing a feeling — we experience it as weakness and exposure. But when someone else does the very same thing, we see courage, honesty, even beauty.
The explanation lies in distance. Up close, we see our own flaws magnified, every crack in the foreground; in others we take in the whole, and the whole moves us. It’s the same gaze we cast on the Tower: from afar it is harmony, up close it is an engineering error. But it is that error that makes it unique in all the world.
The next time you feel ashamed of an imperfection, try to look at it the way someone who loves you would. Don’t ask “what will they think of my flaw,” but “how would I see this flaw in someone I care about?” Almost always the answer is kinder than the one you reserve for yourself.
Imperfections don’t ruin us: they make us recognisable. No one grows attached to a flawless, smooth surface with no history. We grow attached to the cracks, because that is where the light gets in. The lean you’d love to straighten may be exactly what others remember you for.
Sources
- Bruk, A., Scholl, S. G., & Bless, H. (2018). Beautiful mess effect: Self–other differences in evaluation of showing vulnerability. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 115(2), 192–205.
- Opera Primaziale Pisana — history of the Tower of Pisa (foundation stone laid: 9 August 1173).
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