My kids can turn anything into a competition. Who drew the better elephant? Who drank their milk faster? Who rides their bike faster?
“It’s not a competition” has become one of my parenting mantras.
To which my son replies, “Ok, but if it was, who would win?”
It kind of makes me crazy.
I grew up thinking I wasn’t a competitive person. I don’t care that much about who wins a game of Pictionary, and I didn’t play on competitive sports teams, so I figured that competition wasn’t a big deal to me. My youthful lack of self-awareness is laughable.
I didn’t realize how wrong I was until, in my early twenties, I told a therapist that I wasn’t competitive and she laughed at me. “You’re not competitive about sports. You’re competitive at life. You don’t want to win a game, you want to win everything.”
The truth isn’t always pleasant, is it?
Competition is not always a bad thing. It feels good to be recognized for your achievements, and it feels good to win. There is nothing wrong with wanting to win a game or a competition, and there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be the best at whatever it is that you do.
But for many of us, the root of competition is comparison. And the root of comparison is trying to figure out if we are good enough. We look at how others are doing to see if we are measuring up. If we are doing more, if we are making more money, running more miles, keeping our house cleaner, getting better grades, and so on, then we must be ok. If we aren’t, then we need to do more, make more, run more, clean more, and get better grades so that we will be ok.
We look to winning a competition to give us something that competition just can’t give.
Yes, it feels good to win or to be acknowledged. But once the glow of the win fades, you need another one and another one. You find someone else to compete against, some other standard to achieve, some other way to compare yourself to others and come out ahead. The hope is that you will find a competition or a comparison that tells you that you are doing a wonderful job, that you are good and worthy and valuable.
And competition can’t give us that.
Whether my house is clean enough has nothing to do with how clean my sister’s house is (for the record, her house is always cleaner). Whether I am working too much or not enough has nothing to do with how much my kids’ classmates’ parents work. I see people competing about physical fitness, weight loss, income, how busy they are, their children’s achievements, parenting, appearance, career success, and so many other things. Just like kids, we can turn anything into a competition.
But what other people are doing really has no bearing on our needs and achievements and accomplishments, and even less to do with our worth and value. If I compare myself to a marathon runner, my 3 mile runs could look pathetic. If I compare myself to someone who plays video games all day and never exercises, I could feel really smug about my exercise habits. Truly, neither is relevant. What matters is how well I am caring for and nurturing my body and my health. It’s not a competition.
Let’s stay in our lanes. Instead of comparing and competing, let’s assess our own needs and what health looks like for us and our families. Let’s free ourselves from the lie that competition can tell us anything about our value and worth; these things are inherent to our humanity, and winning and losing cannot touch them. Let’s be intentional about seeing abundance and opportunity everywhere, instead of seeing daily life as a competition for resources that are in short supply.
It’s not a competition.