Still Thinking: What is Winning?

When I was working as a relatively new teacher at a Jr. High in CA, the school sent some of the faculty to participate in a ropes course. (A completely fabulous experience by the way!) The early morning was spent on the ground doing team-building and self-reflectory exercises, and then in the afternoon we went up, up, up. Climbing poles, walking high beams, swinging from trees, that sort of thing. What I discovered in the afternoon is that my fear of heights is more intense than I had imagined. But it was the morning discovery that has had the longest lasting impact.

In one particular exercise the instructor broke us up into teams of four. She gave each team two long wooden beams that had four long rope handles. Her instructions were that together we were to walk on the beams and cross a finish line about 50 yards away. If any part of any one's body touched the ground, we had to return to the starting point and begin again. It was kind of tricky, like a three legged race involving four people. We had to coordinate raising our feet and pulling the beam together to cover any ground. It was terrifically fun, and we became intent on not letting the P.E. staff win. Competing with the other teams made it ever so much trickier since a relative amount of speed was needed. Sometimes in our haste to catch the leader, we would bumble it and have to begin again, inevitably in more haste to make up time. While we attempted to focus on the task at hand, it was difficult not to feel behind. That feeling, that need to rush, that need to win, was most responsible for throwing us off our groove.

At the end of the exercise we gathered for a group recap. The first thing out of the instructor's mouth was, "Isn't it interesting that I never said in the instructions that it was a race? All I said was that you were to cross the finish line." As we spent the next 15 minutes talking about how that exercise often translates into life, I had a real "Ah Ha" moment.

There really is no "winning" in the exercise of life. God never said we were competing with each other. Our human frailty sets up those parameters. Sometimes our sight is so limited that we can only compare our progress with those around us. The problem, however, is that none of us start at the same point. In some areas some of us have a head start, in other areas we begin a little behind. Each of us has a set of strengths and weaknesses that make our situation unique. God doesn't require us to be better than; He just requires that we finish our specific course. None of us has the same trajectory, and we can't compare ourselves to or compete with someone else without altering that course in some way.

As per my post yesterday, nothing bad has happened as of late. I have had some interesting and thought provoking conversations recently which have bent my mind on the topic. It's true that I have run into my share of "haters" in my lifetime, but who hasn't? We all survived Jr. High and High School, didn't we?

My Junior year, in fact, was such a nightmare that I begged my mother to let me finish my Senior year in Denver, CO living with my older sister and her family. Mom said no, so I had to resort to cutting out a Nike ad and hanging it in my locker. It was my mantra for the year: "If you ain't you, you ain't nobody."

Bottom line is, I am not, nor have I ever been, interested in being a version of someone else. None of us should, but that doesn't mean we belittle the success of another. We should be inspired by another's light. We should be encouraged when they triumph. We do need heroes. We don't need cynicism. That just throws us off our groove. There is enough joy and success to go around for everyone to "win."