Competition
November 11th, 2008 (Life)I had a somewhat strange thought today as I was listening to Mark Driscoll. So, Mark is going through the Song of Solomon in a sermon series and today he was giving us insight into men’s brains. One thing he mentioned is how competitive men are and how much they like to win.
Before I share my thought, let me take you back to my early childhood days. I used to love playing basketball and even played on a small rec center team in elementary school. It was a lot of fun until I went from being somewhere in skill around the top 50% of people I played with to being worse of a player than most of the kids my age. Even my own sister would beat me at just about every game of 1-on-1 we played (no hard feelings sis). So, instead of working on improving my game, I gave up and became bitter. I resented anything related to the “common” team sports (i.e. basketball, football, baseball, etc…) – “extreme” sports were OK with me though. *sarcasm* After much therapy *sarcasm*, I’m proud to let you all know that now I am OK with you playing whatever sport you choose – I am no longer bitter. Personally though, I enjoy snowboarding, skateboarding and running.
Fast forward to today…the thought I had (as I was out running, ironically enough) was that if all guys are competitive, where does the competition go if you are not into sports? At this point in my life, it goes into competing with others in what I know about computers (this is unhealthy) and competing against myself and others with my running (healthy). It would be nice to put more of that competitive energy into running and into wait for it…serving others…what does service have to do with competition you ask? Only that the energy has to go somewhere, so it might as well go to something to combat the unhealthy competition.
Question for you all: What do you put your competitive energy towards? Question #2: Is it healthy to push your kids (especially boys) to play sports?
I certainly feel a competitiveness with various things. Mostly with accomplishments. I’m looking to be better than someone. A better video, a better score on a test, a better debating point. I think the main thing that I feel the most competitive about is making sure people thoroughly understand scientific concepts (i.e. stem cell research, etc.) before forming their opinion. Not sure if that’s true competition though, especially since I don’t like to compete with people in my own field…I just take it as a fact that they know more than me.
Pushing your kids to play sports is a hard one. On one hand, I’d like to let the child decided what he/she would like to do. On the other hand, I can see that there are some things that may have not been experienced and later enjoyed had the parent not mandated involvement. I say make suggestions and see if there’s any interest first, but have enough insight to know when the child wants to quit because it’s just not for them or wants to quit because their just being stubborn and/or lazy.
Love you!
Hmm. The kids and sports is a tough one. Having no kids of my own, I can’t speak from personal experience, but I am a nanny for three over-worked children who are involved in every sport known to man: swimming, tennis, gymnastics, dance, hockey, soccer, football…you name it. They still manage to get straight A’s even though they are often doing their homework in the car between activities, or at 9:00 at night once the day has calmed down. But seriously, what 10 year old needs that kind of pressure??
Right now my most competitive feature is at work. I usually race to load the trucks as fast as possible with the proud fact that I am faster than everybody else. This in turn just gives me more work to do so it’s a little counter-productive.
As far as forcing…err…encouraging your kids to play sports, I think it’s just fine as long as their only reason for playing is not for your approval. I think they need to feel some attachment to the game in order to really have the drive to succeed. This is all in theory though as I don’t have any kids and never was really encourage/forced to play sports as a child.
Interesting questions. Of course you know that I am not competetive at all (hehehhe). Seriously though, I think a healthy dose of competetiveness is okay. It’s when it goes over the top that I have to watch it. At work I like to compete to get the most done, to be the best, etc. And sometimes it’s about the team, not me and I have to set aside my own desire to be the best. As far as encouraging your kids to be involved in sports: if they want to, they should go for it! There’s other ways to compete in a healthy way, however, other than sports: music, grades, etc. I think the key is to help them to look out for others as well, not just themselves.