Competition

I have never been a competitive guy. I've been playing competitive sports since I was a child and I honestly can't remember one time where I let the outcome of a game/match affect my mood for more than a few minutes. Granted, there was never much at risk in any of those situations, but compared to the other guys around me who would let a pick-up game of tetherball ruin their relationships with their families, I was extremely uncompetitive. Double granted, I've never really given too much more than a couple shits about anything. For some reason, God made me widely apathetic, and personally I'm really glad He did. That begs the question, what's better? To care too much about everything, including things that don't matter, or to care too little about everything, including things that you should probably care more about? I think you could answer that question fairly both ways.

That's not the point I'm going for with this post though. Competition is naturally a good thing. It drives innovation, lowers prices, and does all kinds of other things that you would have to have some kind of grasp of economics to explain. That's the big picture, but it's a small picture world. In my first and last 16 years of education, competition has really pissed me the hell off. Do you know why that is? Because people get competitive over the pettiest things. You see it in elementary school, when the little kids get picked on because they didn't grow as fast as the other kids or because they have to wear glasses. You see it in middle and high school school when guys and girls start to figure out that their normally hidden body parts can make a pretty interesting connection. The first guy to have sex (or just the first guy to lie about having sex) is better than the rest of the guys. The guy with the biggest biceps is better than everyone else. It's all competition. Competition drives kids to feel really bad about themselves, the second they realize that they don't compare well to someone else in all the things that 10-18 year olds think are important is the second that they start not liking who they actually are. That's really jacked up, isn't it? Who are we to put ourselves down based on things we could never control? You have one life, one body, one mind, why would you ever want to even attempt to convince yourself that that life, body, and mind aren't good enough? Blame it on competition.

So now I'm a senior in college at the ripe age of 22. I'm about done with my years of spending the majority of my time around people of the same age and of the same situation as me, and I can say that I have learned a ton. The one big thing is that I am really glad that I've never been a competitive guy. I've lived my life not worrying about comparing to other people. I've just wanted to be the best Jon Anderson around... and that actually wasn't very easy since it's such a common name, but I think I've accomplished it, minus that damn country singer with all those awards.

You'd think that people would be pretty mature by the time they're in their 20's, but they really aren't. Especially at a division 3 college, where anyone with any coordination can join any sports team and almost always let the fact that they get to wear a fifty dollar jersey with a proper noun on the front of it go straight to their ego. Is playing a division 3 sport impressive? No, but that sure as hell doesn't stop anybody that does it from thinking and acting like they are better than everyone else around them that doesn't play. Could I play football for Waynesburg? Technically yes, there aren't tryouts for the team, but I wouldn't ever see the field.

The other thing is that this idea of competition keeps people away from pursuing things that are actually important in life. I'll just continue to pick on football players. We've got a bunch of athletes here that are so concerned with proving how much better they are than everyone else because they play football that by the time the graduate they have gained nothing else from their four years here than 20 extra pounds of muscle in their upper body. Guess what? You still aren't good enough to get paid to play football after college... and last time I checked it's pretty important to get paid in today's day and age. They spend their entire four years here thinking about sport and completely ignore everything else, and then they're four years behind everyone else and still have all the debt that the rest of us do, because division 3 doesn't give out athletic scholarships.

Competition is a good thing only when you compete in things that are important. Competing to have the best looking resumé is a good thing, competing to have the best grades in school is a good thing, and believe it or not, competing to actually be a good, moral person is a good thing as well. Intelligence is obviously a good thing, but by looking at my generation that's sadly not so obvious.

This blog used to be at least a little bit funny, maybe I'll get back to that sometime soon.