On Competition

     Feeling like I need to break the monotonous rhythm of weekends here in college, I like to take the bus down to college town for Saturday lunch. Since coming to college, eating alone never bothered me that much. In fact, it is a source of relaxation. It was a time for me to reflect on the past week as well as what to do in the future.

     Since the town has always been teeming with life, I thought I might be able to absorb its liveliness for the weekend. But yesterday’s weather was colder than usual, so students were rushing along, flooding into shops. I also rushed into a small Japanese diner. The shop was small, but the food was pretty good. Besides, it was not too expensive. The shop owners probably thought that lo-fi hip hop is trendy or aesthetic, so they played it gently in the background. Not a place to take your date I think, but a pretty comfy place to be in.

     I ordered my food and sat down on a long table near the counter. A girl who seemed to be junior or senior also sat down on a nearby table. A few minutes later, a guy around the same age came into the store and sat with her. They were friends, but the encounter was probably by chance. They ordered some kind of Southeast Asian noodle bowl (they serve Southeast Asian dish too) that looked really good, but I was too shy to ask them what they ordered. 

     I quickly gobbled down my dish, but the size of it had always been too large for me. As I struggled to finish the last few portions of rice, I accidentally eavesdropped on their conversation. No really, I had no intention of listening to them in the first place, but they suddenly became serious.

“Do you think you’ve grown into a better person?” the girl asked the guy. He slurped a few strings of noodles and looked up to her.

“Yea, I think so. Actually, I don’t think I’ve become a better person, but I’ve grown here. I’ve grown to do well in classes. I’ve grown to do well in clubs. But I don’t think growth is correlated with being a better person.”

“So it’s not like growth is particularly good?”
“I think it’s good that I’ve adapted to do well here. But I don’t think, as a person, I’ve become better.”

“How so?”

“It’s just that I had to compete with everyone and that I think I became too competitive in the sense that it’s bordering being cut-throat. I’ve been stressed with dealing with other people, and they kept using me all the time…” he broke off.

They paused.

“When did you realize this?” The girl asked. The boy bit his lips.

“Sophomore spring.”

     After lunch, I walked back up the hill back to the main campus. In the distance, the clock tower was chiming its afternoon concert. The bells echoed the gorges.

     After hearing two upperclassmen talk about the end game of college, I became somewhat worried. This was partly because I am also competitive. In the past, certain skill sets that I have were mostly improved because of competitions with others. When I first entered high school, I was cut from the Junior Varsity Tennis Team. This crushed me inside. It was not that I never knew what losing was like, it was that I knew I could have been there, but I choked while trying out for the team. That year I worked hard spending hours on weekends and even asked to practice with the varsity team. The following year, I tried out again, and I was able to defeat half of last year’s roster catapulting me to the team’s 3rd seed. The satisfaction that I got from this was monumental. 

      But being on the team was not as I expected. The pressure to maintain my spot forced me to work even harder. Every Friday, the coach made us play each other, so the lower ranking players have a chance of climbing the ladder. To me, this process was more stressful than matches against other schools. I dreaded going to practice on Fridays. It never brought me to the point of burnout, but I knew I was done with tennis. During my senior year, I stopped tennis altogether. 

      Nevertheless, I greatly value competition. I think that if it is something I can do well and love, I will look for competitive opportunities just because I want to grow. It would be out of self-interest. Or at least this is what I’m telling myself. Being in a competition that is too high-stake will, like the guy, will bring me into a gyre of misery. One that is too low-stake will be boring. Reflecting on both this and last entry, I think I might be too influenced by external circumstances. But so far, it has brought me to where I am now. 

      However, I do hate academic competition. Competing for better grades does not mean anything and it would not bring any long term benefit for me. That is one type of competition I am not willing to engage in. 

      I’ve read a bit of stoic, existential and Chinese philosophy and they don’t really encourage the high-speed track of a competitive life. I agree with it too. An all-or-nothing way of thinking, sacrificing everything for the future is not sustainable. It might even be sustainable in the long term. But a mediocre and quiet life is not for me neither. I want to be really good at something. And a way to really get good at something, for me, is through a competitive environment.

      Perhaps competitions I enjoy are ones whose processes are as valuable as the end result: a scenario in which I could think to myself that even if I don’t win, I would be very happy with how far I have come.