I Can Do Anything You Can Do Better

Ah, the competitive spirit.  It's what brought dogs to space and men to the moon and simultaneously threatened Americans with potential nuclear fallout for decades on end.

Much like sword-fighting of old, competition seems to come with a double edge.  On the one hand, it can give one's rear a good, swift kick in the right direction.  On the other hand, it tends toward dysfunction on too many occasions.  It doesn't take much to have too much.

Take, for instance, our friends, the Russian government.  Okay, so they're not really our friends, and they probably never were.  We only joined up with them during the second world war because, well, it was a world war, and we needed them to win.  And it worked well for us until they took over Eastern Europe and pointed nukes at us from Cuba and, you know, not great things like that.  Eventually, the wall fell and the Soviet Union dissolved, and there was a period of time under Boris Yeltsin where Russia and America didn't hate each other, and young Americans such as myself didn't associate Russia with bomb shelters and spies and bad people.  But then Putin showed up, and much in the way of fashion, "retro" is back in, and Russia and America hate each other once more.

What will be the unintended benefit this time around?  Unexpected strides in cybersecurity?  Explosive growth in alternative energy?  Russia pays for a wall all the way around the United States, and Mexico is off the hook?


Thursday night, as I sat at my parents' dining room table (unbeknownst to me, breathing in germs that would later lay me up for 36 hours), my cough-weary mother recounted a conversation she'd just had with my aunt last week about learning styles.  They'd been discussing my cousin's schoolwork and homework habits, and in so doing, she'd shared my siblings' learning quirks: one of us would read incessantly and was able to teach himself things well, another learned through song and dance and stories, another would only read if she could do so in a tree she'd climbed, and so on.

"I told your Aunt Liz, you became good at so many things because you were so competitive.  The minute someone else learned how to do something, you wanted to be good at it, too."

She's totally right.  I stuck with piano for as long as I did because I wanted to be the best musician in the family.  I started singing because my sister did.  As much as I used to dislike reading, I read one thousand pages in one month in fifth grade because we had to set a reading goal and MINE WAS GOING TO BE THE BEST.

Of my immediate family, I probably had the highest GPA in high school and the best SAT score (though not by much).  If it weren't for NOCCA (my creative writing program) and its subjective grading system's disqualifying impact, I might have been part of the Top 10 in my regular high school class (then again, freshman geometry might've kept me out first).

Of course, of my family, I probably hated high school the most and had the least amount of fun.  I used to wake up, spend nine hours at school, spend five hours doing homework, watch an hour of "Whose Line is it, Anyway?" (so I didn't spontaneously combust from the stress), sleep for seven hours, and then start all over again.  Give or take some time sobbing into my mother's shoulder.

Sometimes, being the best sucks the worst.

In the years since high school, my competitiveness has tempered.  In college, I let myself go a little, and I learned what a social life was, and by the time graduation rolled around, I was a bonefied 3.89 GPA slacker.  (So, I'm slow to change--sue me.)  Once I got past my first year of teaching, though, I'd unwound considerably.  My goal was no longer to be the best at just school or work, it was to be good at living well, too.

Then again, competition dies hard.  It's led me to learn and know a lot of stuff, and in so doing, to become somewhat neurotic about "truth."  And that makes things sticky in a world where clear cut truth is hard to find.  Honestly, being a massive goofball is probably my saving grace as a human being.  Were I not like those adorable puppies that trip over their own ears, people might realize how obnoxious and unflattering it is that I pee all over the floor and chew your shoes.  Do I know the year that the Berlin Wall fell?  Yes (it's 1989).  If someone else gives an incorrect date, do I have to correct them?  Probably not (but it will eat me up inside until I tell someone else about it later).

In trying to offset my own inflexible and sometimes judgmental behavior, I can swing too far in the opposite direction, opting for indifference or aimlessness over the hard line.  But there must be another way.  It must be possible to believe something to be the truth, and be open to the idea that there's another side to the matter.  It must be possible to be only okay (or really quite bad) at something and want to be better without needing to be the best.  It must be possible to care just the right amount: enough to cherish old knowledge, enough to seek new perspectives.  And if it is, I want to be the best damn knowledge-cherisher, perspective-seeker there is.  Challenge accepted.