Competition and Camaraderie
May 19th, 2008
So there are toy catalogues sent to parents like me — that is, somewhat crunchy parents who embrace peace and non-violence, and spend money on our children as if that can shape their values. These catalogues have page after page of toys with fair trade stamps, toys tested for lead paint, toys that challenge assumptions about gender and promote open-ended and imaginative and problem-solving play. There is never anything plastic or Fisher-Price in the whole catalogue. And inevitably there are board games that bear no resemblance to Candyland or Chutes and Ladders because they are “collaborative” rather than “competitive.”
If you have ever watched a three year old devastated because his five year old brother beat him at a board game, you might decide that competitive is bad. And I have issues with competition, thinking that the competitive aspect of playing violin in a youth symphony did something to suck the joy out of it for me, put anxiety where I didn’t need anxiety, made me listen for other people’s mistakes so I could feel better about myself.
I even came up with this theory (and even blogged about it in December) that what drives competition is a perception of scarcity. There can be only one first place, there are only so many chairs in an orchestra, there are only so many applicants accepted to this school or that program… What seemed to be at stake, I suspected, when my kids were in competition with one another was not just the feeling of being the winner, but also parental love. So if they felt competitive with one another, I must be doing something wrong as a parent setting them up against each other, making them believe there wasn’t enough love to go around! When Aodán was out of town for a week Xander happily told me he was basking in 33.3% of my attention rather than a measly 25%, so it was good for him. And I had thought there was plenty of me to go around…
So I was pretty anti-competition. And then I was having a conversation with Sarah of Cafe Mama (I do have other friends, I swear, it’s just that they aren’t all so easy to link to!) a month or two ago and she shocked me by saying, and forgive the paraphrase, that she was all about the competition. She had run and coached runners, and competition in her book, was a good thing. And because I respect Sarah so much and adore her thoughtfulness and carefully considered values, I’ve been reevaluating my position on competition.
The first thing I realized is that if you like who you are and are happy being yourself, running a race and finding out somebody else runs faster than you is not likely to crush your spirit. Also, that when you’re competitive over something expressive, like violin playing, writing, or painting, you can take judgements of technique seriously (or not) and that doesn’t mean that the expression doesn’t have an entirely separate value. Third, I was surprised to realize that I have all of these fears of competition that are not about losing but about winning and alienating people, about losing friends to envy, which actually, is short-changing my friends and their capacity for generosity. I tend to keep quiet when I am proud of something which deprives them of the of the opportunity to celebrate with me, and friendships which are only about commiseration are out of balance.
I’ve spent my life defining myself as non-athletic, and only came into a happier appreciation of my body and what it can do through yoga and natural childbirth. I blamed that on competition, I think, unfairly. To be out pushing myself on my bicycle feeling the fierce joy of pedaling as hard as I can, I wouldn’t mind the camaraderie of a friend to challenge me to push harder, race faster. My sons are starting to also define themselves by their not playing sports, but I realize that I don’t want my boys to shrink from sport when there are in fact, deep joys to be had there. I am not ready to sign myself up for hours of sitting on a soccer field in the sun, my ideal sports experience for them would have no parental involvement except a ride here and there, I wish that there were kids in the neighborhood and pick-up games happening informally after school. But I want to stay open to the sports experience for them, and in the mean time, pull out the board games where there are winners and losers and help us all practice the grace of having fun while winning and losing.
May 20th, 2008 at 8:42 am
I found myself thinking about the difference between competition and ambition after reading your blog. I have come to think of competition in a way that implies antagonism and resentment while I like to think that ambition implies hope and aspiration. Perhaps it is a bit like the difference between asking for what you need verses asking for what you want. The first is
laudable and altruistic, and you can feel quite satisfactory, even
virtuous. The second often feels like naked greed and brings most
of us a bit of anxiety and worse, embarrassment. Though the differences seem to change in a group dynamic… I’ll definitely be thinking about this all day. Thanks!
May 20th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
I wonder how sibling rivalry fits into this discussion of competition. I think that a lot of my f-ed up ideas about competition came from my parents and the dynamic they set up between me and my sisters (well, and perhaps some predispositions of my own that were possibly just hard-wired that way.) In particular I’m thinking about how my parents tried to build our self-esteem by reinforcing the roles that we naturally gravitated towards. In this little paradigm, there was only room for one brain, one athlete, one beauty, and each one of us suffered a kind of stunted growth in whatever area our sisters excelled in, because we couldn’t identify ourselves in that role. I keep thinking about Faber and Mazlish and how they stress the importance of understanding and appreciating varying talent in oneself and one’s children and not letting ourselves or our children pigeon-hole themselves.
So maybe competition isn’t inherently bad, but a lot of the ideas that I bring to competition are ultimately self-defeating. And, like you were saying, those self-defeating beliefs about competition seem to stem from my operating from a place of scarcity (only room for one super-mom in the family type of thing). You wrote about how you spent your life defining yourself as non-athletic, and how you came into a happier appreciation of your body as an adult through yoga and natural childbirth, and it sounds like you and I had very similar experiences (only our roles were switched around).
The other thing that I have to keep in mind is how I naturally gravitate toward better than/less than thinking, and how my children do as well. That kind of thinking kept me alienated and unhappy for so much of my life, and so a lot of my growing up spiritually has been about me getting comfortable with the idea of being “just another bozo on the bus”. It seems all too easy for competition to push children into adult roles too early, putting pressure on them to be achievers and performers. Cooperation is something that definitely needs to be cultivated more in our household!