COLUMN: Sometimes you win, sometimes you don’t
This weekend, I spent the bulk of my time doing two things: watching football and playing Nerts. Nerts is a fast-paced version of multi-player solitaire, a favorite among me and my roommates. The longer the game continues, the louder we get, screaming over moving cards or near-misses. The best part is, we are all competitive people, so the stakes are high and the tension is thick. Someone always wins, and someone always loses and that’s OK.
This basic concept has become muted in many areas of life. I distinctly remember playing a spelling game in elementary school and whoever spelled the word first won. Except that every time I spelled the word correctly, the whole class got to pass the treat basket around. There was no point in trying to be the first one to raise my hand or the one who knew the words because in the end, everyone won.
Elementary schools teach children that competition is bad because no one likes to lose and that makes people sad. Each child is pampered through grade school never forced to work for anything because at the end of the day there are no winners or losers and everyone gets to go home with a treat.
Unfortunately, this is not how life works. Not everyone wins and not everyone goes home at the end of the day with a treat. There are winners and losers, the trick is to learn how to play the game well enough to makes sure you are one of the winners.
The lack of competition today feeds a sense of entitlement to our generation. They feel like they deserve the best job, the nicest house, the newest car, simply because they showed up to life, not because they earned it.
My sister recently told me about a friend of hers who is up to her neck in credit card debt because she truly believes she is entitled to have the best of everything.
She has two big screen TVs, hundreds of pairs of shoes, two closets full of clothes, a brand new car and spends hundreds of dollars a month on dining out with friends, tanning, nails, hair extensions and expensive makeup. She is in her 20s, has no job, lives in her mother’s house with less than two years of a college education.
She’s bought into the façade the world tells her: she is worth it, rather than working to earn it. Rewards in life are only earned through competition.
Competition needs to be fostered at an early age, rather than harnessed and limited. Teach children to handle the loses and the failures and pick themselves up and go on. Because you’re playing the game, you will lose some of the time. No one wins all the time, the only trick is to win more than you lose. The point is to learn the game rather than preventing the competition.
In football, the players each know their job as part of the team. The plays are studied; the game becomes a science for the purpose of winning, the purpose of reaching perfection. In each football game there is a winning team and a losing one. That’s what makes it fun, that’s what makes it exciting. Athletes are well-respected, well-paid and carry with them a sense of prestige and pride. Why? Because they win. Their profession is based on competition and they learn to be successful.
The market thrives on competition, students gain school spirit through rivalries, success only comes from being better at something than someone else and the trick is to understand the game. To have a strategy to get the results you want. The types of people who can do this are those who “get it.” The one’s who don’t get it are easy to spot, they stumble through life looking confused, complaining that they never seem to get a break while the ones who get it are busy planning their next play.
In order to be one of the ones who get it, you must accumulate enough knowledge to gain the information and skills necessary to win. Learn about yourself, the other people you encounter, find out how the game is played, play by the rules and be prepared for whatever the other team is going to throw at you.
Competition is the way to success, so embrace it, look for it, create it and strive to be one of the winners. And when you don’t win, pick yourself up, study the game, adjust your strategy and keep playing.
Emma Tippetts is a senior
majoring in law and
constitutional studies and print journalism. Comments or questions are welcome at etippetts@cc.usu.edu.