OUTRUNNING THE BEAR
An old story describes two campers who encounter an angry bear. One of them immediately begins to lace up running shoes. When the other camper notes that you can't hope to outrun a bear, the runner replies that "I don't have to outrun the bear, I only have to outrun you."
This story neatly captures a problem shared by many. Many people look only to one or more fellow competitors to judge their performance. They say to themselves that as long as I do better than some individual or group of people, I've performed satisfactorily. Rather than thinking about doing their best, they think only of relative performance, they think only of defeating someone else, they focus only on the performance of others.
People who approach activities in this manner lose most of the healthy aspects of competition. Competition can spur us to do better, to perform at our best. Healthy competition can add to the joy of participation. Competition can add friends, enhance friendship, gain respect from our peers. But looking only to relative performance can embitter, can lead to resentment, can in many cases lead to a desire to see others fail.
The ultimate satisfaction, the only true victory, is to do one's best. If we do our best, we don't care what our fellow competitors do. We hope our fellow competitors will do well, will do their best, because we can learn from good performance by others, because we wish others to succeed, because we take pleasure in the pleasure of others. If we gain an easy victory over another, our performance will ultimately suffer because we won't try as hard, we will lose enthusiasm, life will become boring, we won't do our best.
Try to outrun the bear: You'll eventually run faster, you'll make life better for others and you'll have the satisfaction which can only come from doing your best. It doesn't matter if your performance is relatively better. Healthy competition only involves you and your performance. If it happens to be better than someone else on a given day, congratulations. If it happens to be worse, but you did your best, congratulations also. Doing your best is the only victory worth having.
8-7-00
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