Competition

Whoopie!!! I made it to the 40th Day..

Taking 3 cups of green tea a day is taking its toll on my sleep patterns, nights are mostly restless and in case I manage to sleep it is short termed and disturbed.

Negligence especially when done deliberately shall always generate severe consequences. No error can be rectified unless we acknowledge a mistake as a mistake. Illness can’t be cured if we deny its very presence. Would escaping a problem ever help, I think not.

I read somewhere that parents these days are opting for unique names for their children. The psychologists conducting this study explain the rationale behind this trend is that parents now want their children to have individuality and to stand out from the rest of the crowd. However, psychologists fear that this trend would also lead to narcissism, i.e. an abnormal and excessive love and admiration for oneself.

In yester years parents were more inclined toward giving their children most popular names of the time and this trend indicated that they wanted the children to fit in the society i.e. to be part of a group. Nevertheless, the result of this theory is yet to be seen in future but for me it sounds rather true. If I look around today I hear so many unusual names with most of them being senseless bordering to absurdity. Are we as a society really becoming obsessive with the desire to stand out, to beat the competition at any cost, and to be unique? Is this the kind of mentality that we are transmitting to the younger generation? Children are innocent they cannot be blamed; it is the adult who needs to be held accountable.

So many times I come across young mothers whining about competition whether it is the admission to any school or getting highest grades or anywhere which involves academic. These poor children will unfortunately adopt the mindset of their parents and would always look at their peers as rival who should fail under any cost for them to succeed. They shall enter a race only to win, to be always ahead of everybody, a constant pressure to win and to be first in the topmost slot in whatever they do.

When I was completing my 12th year, there was a girl who was a topper in 10th class throughout Karachi. She used to be always anxious and stressed out so much so that she got sick and vomited sometimes in class due to her anxiety pangs. Whenever we discussed anything with respect to education her entire focus was to be first and think everyone as a competition.

Seeing her condition her anxiety, her absolute and undeterred support for competition our Botany Professor was very concerned for her health and gave all of us a priceless advice on day; he said, “don’t ever try to compete with anyone because Competition Is The Purest Form Of Jealousy. Both in competition and jealousy you simply cannot tolerate your opponent to be better than you; you would never appreciate the success of another and you would always be under constant pressure to defeat the other, the rival. Competition only makes you bitter and unhappy. So always compete with yourself, always work very hard off not because you can’t tolerate someone else winning but because you strive for excellence and to give your best.”

I firmly believe that this was the best advice anyone can get although the girl for whose welfare he said all this did not appreciate it at all and continued with her practice while getting sick on and off. I wonder where she would be now.

“Strive to be first: first to nod, first to smile, first to compliment and first to forgive”

With love to all lovelies……

Sonya.  (Day 40)