The culture of competition

As I watch my son grow up and develop, I am constantly amazed at how much he learns from one day to the next.  I know theoretically about the learning curve at this age (he's 20 months now), but to see it in real life is totally humbling.  I put him in creche when he was 14  months, and was mortified when he was put into the 'nest' with the babies because he couldn't yet walk.  It's not that he COULDN'T walk,  it's really that he didn't want to walk on his own.  He would only walk when he held someone's hand.. it was a confidence thing more than anything else.  Still, it was my first realisation that he might not be the absolute best at everything (okay, really, the realisation wasn't about Joshua, who is perfect in every way.. it was more about me not being the best at everything, because I would have taught him to walk if I knew how to teach him a bit better). 

Image: Paul Martin Eldridge

(Cue the dramatic music)... Enter the first realisation of a nasty little emotion that I had, up till now, been able to deny quite effectively.. I'm competitive.  Yes, my friends will read this and laugh, thinking - "you only realised this now?" but, in my defense, I can justify quite well. :)

This is a difficult thing for me to reconcile, because I believe that competitiveness is an undesirable trait of our culture.  I don't believe it is a natural thing for people to be competitive, because ultimately it generates 99 losers for every 100 people, and as social beings, we would get much further working together than antagonistically.

Competition dictates that if you are not first place, your efforts are not worthwhile.  Even if first place got 85 and you got 84.5, that 84.5 in a competition suddenly went from a triumph to a "so close", all because someone else did better.   It's a thought process that dictates: I can only win if I make others losers.  Where is the logic in that??

Competition is the antithesis of abundance and, in my opinion, a major factor in our lack of self esteem as a society.  The problem is that when people are led to believe that they're less than the fantastic uniquely wonderful beings that we are, we either don't realise our potential, or we hide our light, or try to bring down others so that we have company in our imagined mediocrity (mediocrity loves company even more than misery..)

I read somewhere:  If you want to be incrementally better: Be competitive. If you want to be exponentially better: Be cooperative.

I invite you to join me in finding ways to be cooperative to achieve our goals. I would love to know what you are achieving by working with others!