If you know me, you know I am a competitive person. If you don't know me - I AM A COMPETITIVE PERSON! Over the years I have been known to go for blood. Okay, so high school I was vicious. I love the feeling of winning. I love the feeling of knowing I did something better than other people. I also hate the feeling of losing. I hate knowing I could have and should have done better.
I grew up in a world where the best are known for being the best and the worst we never heard of. In my childhood there was no participation trophy. If you lost a game of Go Fish, you lost. If you won there was no encouragement of gloating and if you lost there were no tears and whining. Because of this, I wanted to win. Even though gloating wasn't encouraged, it happened. The tears? Nope. You didn't get to have a bad attitude because things didn't turn out the way you wanted. Boy, did I want to win. At EVERYTHING. Even now, as an adult, I love to win. I hate losing at anything. I don't throw a fit over losing. I don't gloat when I win. I just want the intrinsic response that comes with winning. That can look like a lot of things for me. I play in a recreation volleyball league. I send my writing to publishers. I run road races (though not as many as I used to). As time has gone by, I find myself competing with myself more than with others. Growing up I played team sports. It was harder to win and lose with other people. Did we win from a collective effort, or did one person lead the team? Did we lose because one person was terrible, or did we all suck? That is still the toughest part for me. Losing a volleyball game because one person can't seem to pass the ball is frustrating. Winning a basketball game knowing you scored over half of the team's points is a pride builder. Being competitive with grace is difficult. But no matter what, my competition is my own. I have learned to compete against myself to better myself. Running has helped me a great deal with that. I run against my old times. I try to be better than the last time. I add miles. I add stairs. There are so many ways to get myself to focus on bettering myself. Even in my work I can fight against myself. Yesterday you got three pages written, today get something! (Okay, that might literally be my day today. Long week. Oh well.) But I focus on comparing myself to myself, not others. I can look outside and see a thin woman out for a run and think, "I can beat her!" or "Go get it, girl!" There are times when I need to compete against others for some motivation, but it's more fun to encourage others to compete as well. However, there is one area of competition that I will not enter - my family. For some reason we live in a world where it is fun to compare our children to each other than to let them play together. For this, I cannot comprehend. I have stopped posting about the great things that my children do because it hurts other people's feelings. WHAT? I am limiting the joy of my children for fear that other parents will compare their child to mine? I must be out of my mind. But I would rather keep friendships than look like a braggart. (I'm sorry, but my kids could get an awesomeness post 80% of our days. It's poor form.) I don't bring up the good things about my kids to show them off to the world. I'm just a proud mama. I see mama bear posts all the time. Do you know what I do? I hit the like button. Because our children are not in competition with each other. One day my kid might be smarter than yours, and next year yours could take the lead. Wonderful. That competition, should come from our children's desire to grow and do better, not ours to make our kids better. I'm tired of having a pissing contest with our children. Don't get me wrong, when our kids play sports against each other, there is now a competition. One will win. One will lose. If they are teammates, there will be competition. One is better (whether specifically in an area or in general) and one is worse. That's just life. It's not up to us to start talking about how great little Timmy is at baseball with condescension in our voice. It's up to our kids to decide they want to be better and fight for it. There is healthy competition for our children. In fact, it's the lack of healthy competition that is destroying this country. Children are fine with a trophy that says their parents paid for them to play than earning a trophy. This is how we weed out the losers from the winners. Parents are always saying how they hope their children grow into great adults, but they haven't raised great children yet. Teach kids it is okay to want to be the best and watch what will happen. Don't force them. If they don't want to be great at baseball, let them stop now before you invest their inheritance in it. Competition of whose kid is better than whose is a waste of human life. If you are proud of your child, that's fantastic. Be proud. Let me see the picture of your child with their EARNED rewards. I will like your post all day (unless they just beat my child). Don't turn your posts, your comments, or your actual conversations into a discussion about how your kid is better than mine or the neighbor's. Let your kid be awesome because they are. Let them stand alone. If you would like to compete with me, sure thing. Let's have a blast. Learn to compete with yourself and make yourself better. But don't enter your children into your contest. They aren't you. Teach them to compete on their own. Everyone will be better for it.
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May 2023
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