"Facta non verba"; Deeds not words. That is one of my favorite sayings. If you pay attention to how everyone acts around you, you'll learn more than if you listen to what everyone is saying.
Regardless of what we tell our children, everything is really about "winning". I hate it, I hate that I have to admit that is a fundamental truth, but it is. We can say it isn't all we want, but look around, it IS all everyone strives for; people want to win, people want their group to win, they team to win, their company to win, they're kids to win. Winning IS everything.
We all know deep down that winning, at anything, is a temporary boost at most. That win goes away, that feeling of jubilation does not last, someone else comes along and wins over you eventually. Winning doesn't really fix anything and really shouldn't be your goal in life, being happy and healthy and stress free should be your goal...but still, we strive to win. Striving to win causes stress that manifests itself in unhappiness, physical problems and can cause damage to existing relationships around you, but still, we strive to win.
We strive to win so much that not winning has a negative connotation in the world. If you didn't win, you've lost. If you didn't win, you're a loser. Now, I'm not one of those people who think everyone should get a trophy at the relay race, I think teaching kids that winning is everything is actually way better training for living than feeding them the BS that everyone counts, I just find it funny that even as adults, we bullshit ourselves into believing that winning is not the goal in life.
Obviously, we can't all win, in any given situation, there is but only one winner. So that means we are intentionally setting ourselves up to lose, statistically speaking, very rarely will you be a winner. I guess chasing that top spot provides some people with that drive to succeed, which is a good thing, but winning is not the only reason people are driven to succeed, you can simply want to do your best or be driven to understand something better, those can be very motivating factors. Realistically though, it's usually about winning.
Oddly enough, I can't stand people who do not work hard to do their very best and accomplish all they can. I despise the unmotivated man who simply sits back and watches life instead of getting his hands dirty and really working, but to me that's always been more about hard work, character and the experience of life than the goal of being on top. I think working hard and striving to win are not intrinsically tied together.
As I've gotten older, I've come to the conclusion, as MANY people have when they age and gain more insight and wisdom, that being happy in the here and now is far more healthy than winning is and far less stressful. Some people, especially young competitive people would categorize this feeling as "giving up", but to me that just polarizes their immaturity.
Being happy, really, has always been the goal...everyone's goal whether they realize it or not. Because our society subconsciously trains us that winning is everything, we are raised to believe that winning will bring us that happiness. The problem is, and you don't figure it out until you've been though it, that all of that effort and stress you go through while trying to win takes time and it takes years and when you ultimately do win IF you ultimately do win, you look back and see that you've been stressed out and unhappy all the while and somehow you're not happy now that you're a winner either.
.
No comments:
Post a Comment