It's Not a Contest
Photo from mountmarathon.com
“Winning isn’t getting ahead of others, it is getting ahead of yourself.”
~ Roger Staubach
With everyone still talking about Super Bowl 2024, competition seems to be the theme of the week.
A few days ago, my husband and I watched a show on the Smithsonian channel called Aerial Alaska about people running the Mount Marathon Race. I’ve never seen anything like it.
The race starts at the city of Seward on Alaska’s southern coast, which is about 120 miles from Anchorage (and, coincidentally, is also the starting point of the historic Iditarod Trail). Although the views from the climb are majestic, the 1.5-mile course up and down the side of Mount Marathon is steep, rocky, and treacherous. The race is so grueling that many participants get injured.
What propels extreme athletes such as these bold mountain runners to compete? I can’t imagine. I seem to be missing that gene. But I admire their grit, determination, and perseverance as they compete in the face of such harsh conditions.
Physical competitions such as the Super Bowl and Olympic games serve a purpose in our society. They are thrilling for spectators and help us to understand what we’re capable of as humans when we push ourselves to our limits.
Although they don’t dominate popular culture in the same way, exciting competitions exist in the archeological world as well. At least I think they are exciting, having an interest in ancient peoples and history. This week I read a CNN.com story about a contest for scientists to decipher the text of 2,000-year-old manuscripts called the “Herculaneam scrolls.” Over 1,800 of them were first discovered in 1752. The ancient papyrus texts survived the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79 (the same one that decimated the city of Pompeii) but are extremely fragile since they are so charred. The task to decode them is gargantuan—as you might imagine, they can’t be unrolled, and the ancient ink used is barely visible to the human eye.
Over the past few centuries, many different attempts to unwind some of them have actually destroyed them. A contest called The Vesuvius Challenge was launched in 2023 to accelerate some early discoveries made using artificial intelligence. Three motivated students from universities in Nebraska and Germany became the first team to decipher several passages written by Philodemus, a Greek philosopher and poet, using AI technology and robotics. The winning threesome was awarded the grand prize of $700,000. The hope is that almost the entire scroll will be deciphered this year using the same process.
Again, it’s difficult to comprehend the dedication of the team that won the competition, and the endless hours of study involved in their accomplishment.
What drives some of us to compete at this level?
I got a bit of a glimpse into the origin of that drive last week when we were playing the card game UNO with one of our grandsons. Our little guys are at the ages (6-8) where everything’s a competition. They all want to be first, no matter the activity. They get so disappointed when they lose, their little faces crumple up, and they sometimes cry.
Their competitiveness extends to arenas other than games. Even when we pile into cars to follow each other to a fun event, they all want to be in the lead car. When my daughter-in-law recently tried to explain to her son that it didn’t matter if we were in front or behind, he said, “It matters to me.”
We get it. No matter our age, we seem to be hard-wired to want to feel important and special. My hubby’s favorite refrain to them in these circumstances is, “It’s not a contest.”
Our super-active guys have been involved in swimming, soccer, t-ball, and baseball. As we know, some people remain highly competitive throughout their lives; for others it’s more of a stage-related trait. Either way, studies have shown that participation in competitive games can be good for kids, as they learn both emotional resilience and empathy. I remember our daughter’s soccer coach reminding the girls to handle disappointment by imagining the difference between how a tennis ball and an egg react when dropped. The tennis ball bounces back but the egg falls apart.
Competition also helps kids to begin to grasp the concept of giving grace to others. While winning feels good, it means someone else has to lose, which doesn’t feel good to them. It’s so gratifying to see players from opposing teams give each other high-fives after the games. (Although as fans it still smarts for a bit when our favorite team loses.)
Even though there’s skill involved, many games are also largely a matter of chance: someone gets injured, a ref makes a bad call. It’s good for kids to develop the capacity to be happy for someone else when the luck runs their way.
As we mature, most of us outgrow this extreme disappointment at not being the winner or being first every time, at least to some extent.
Being able to recover after failing, despite trying our best, is a sign of emotional maturity.
As adults, by investing in our psychological growth, we can learn how to give ourselves what we need through positive self-talk, rather than needing external validation from others.
But kids aren’t there yet. They need our help. One way we can foster their emotional growth in this area is by teaching them to compete with themselves, not others. To best themselves and their own records.
We can help them develop the perspective that leads to healthy self-esteem: losing doesn’t mean that we’re less than.
In addition to saying, “I’m proud of you,” we can ask, “Are you proud of yourself for the hard work you put in?”
Or, “Can you see how you improved over last week?”
By doing so, we encourage them to recognize their effort and progress rather than feeling good only when they are deemed better than everyone else.
As for my hubby’s sage advice, life actually is a contest if you make it one by comparing yourself to others all the time. But he’s right—it doesn’t have to be.
We can choose to feel good about our accomplishments independent of how anyone else is doing.
This week, think about the areas of your life where you have been pushing hard and making progress towards a goal, and celebrate that personal win.
Go you!
Affectionately,
Elaine