Competition

I'm pretty good at competition--that is to say, in an academic or professional setting. Among all people of all ages I would guess I am in the top twenty per cent, which means I have plenty of company--good company--but also that I function at a level higher than many. But I don't think of myself as better, and I have decided also that I must not think of myself as worse, because either self-image is exaggerated and mistaken. In reality we are to function at the best of our abilities, within the limitations of our environment. There is no other option. If someone achieves better grades or better status than me, that is okay. If someone achieves lesser grades or lower status than me, that is also okay and does not mean I am to see them as inferior. I think that many people involved in competition lose sight of our shared mortality and shared humanity. A judgmental and Darwinist attitude can develop over time. It is most interesting to see this in people who are not high performers, but merely mediocre, and they are the precise ones most apt to look down upon those that achieve less. I observe such egotism and what immediately occurs to me is, hey, you're no Albert Einstein, and I don't think you invented the steam engine either. The truth of the matter is we are all mental midgets working in the shadow of just a few titans of science and the arts. I have no patience for egotism and can't find any room for it in my own mind. I know my limitations and as I get older I find that I am reminded of them more often. Perhaps it is young people who tend toward egotism the most, because so much is handed to young people on a silver platter at birth (particularly the ones from well-to-do families), and they have not encountered quite as many dead-ends, insurmountable obstacles, defeats and reversals.