"Analysis of competition" by A. Loser

In many ecosystems, huge herds of grazing animals of various species stick together- wildebeest, zebra, elephant, antelope, sometimes with buffalo, ostrich and giraffe thrown in there. We summed this up in the statement 'safety in numbers,' I am sure the individual that is dinner tonight disagrees, but truth is there is a measure of safety there. Consider a lion in the midst of a stampeding herd, it should be difficult to focus on one animal when they are a swirling mass of movement and pounding hooves in addition to the noise and dust. It confuses the predator when they all move at once (which is why predators try to separate one from the herd).

Being top of the food chain and all, we big-head-round-ears-two-legs-upright creatures need not worry too much about predation. Yet we live as though someone/something is going to eat us up if we relax. We live in a dog eat dog world, the rat race others would say. We are very conscious of competition, external and (more deadly) internal. It is rarely a life or death situation, yet it is a big deal. Molehill I say, others say mountain, sometimes I think BIG mountain. We born and trained to outdo everyone around us; at home, school, work, (even) in religion we are set against each other. Most of the things we do for 'fun' are a form of competition - who can defeat and defend the largest fictional empire, who can make the most fake money, who can go the fastest in a vehicle that only exists as bits and pixels and so on. Competition with others is supposedly healthy, because it helps to create a platform for setting one's value (I am all that because I am better than you), but before I digress into psychobabble...

Internal competition, contest with oneself, strife toward your ideal you, and (sometimes unfortunately) strife to conform to others' ideals; this gets fierce! I have a point coming, I can feel it: I hate competition. Partly because I am always a player, rarely a winner, because of this reality I was taught and once believed I am a disappointment. Though I find it difficult to purge so many injurious things from my childhood, this I work hard on: one school term I worked to the bone to get good grades. Since we are pitted against another, it mattered most how my grades stood in comparison with my peers. I was 3rd in my class! Brilliant! I got home and my best efforts were not good enough. I have thus decided, it only matters that I am good enough for me! I have since become my competition, every once in a while I want to run faster than him or her, but when I go to bed, it is me I want to beat.

Competition thwarts laziness. Now that I have no races scheduled I do not run as much. I have no tests, I am not teaching, I do not study as much. That is all I need out of competition - the drive to be better than Me, forget the rest of my class, though I want to be impressive, but I do not need that. I want to say next year, "I am doing better than this time last year" and if I am not, I do not want to feel like I did that day.