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This past weekend in the US and Canada we had a long weekend, with Monday being a holiday.
The sun was bright, the smell of the sea air rich and fabulous, seagulls calling and sweeping through the air, as my two children and husband rode off on the ferry to Victoria, British Columbia, for high tea.
I am a British Citizen and so are my two children, even though they haven’t been to England (yet).
This two day adventure was planned long ago.
One brilliant part of the journey was spending half a day (and we wanted more) in the Royal BC Museum.
There just happened to be a display, in gorgeous photography and timelines, of the sordid and dramatic tale of one of my favorite stories (for some weird reason)….humans making it to the South Pole.
The continent had been visited. But now, there was interest in getting to the actual middle of the South Pole, the very center.
A great competition unfolded. Norwegians versus the Brits. Who would get there first?
If you don’t know the brutal story of these journeys…I’m afraid I have to reveal the ending.
The Norwegians won. And the final British party made it, stuck their flag in next to the tattered Norwegian flag and tent, and on their way back to safety…perished.
Based on the diary of the leader of the Brits, I had to chuckle when he wrote “the worst has happened” as they spied the Norwegian flag flying in the distance, and they realized they had lost the race.
Competition is a fierce and sometimes desperate energy…and a little skewed from reality.
The two extreme sides of it are 1) absolute intense determination to win, an almost enraged sense of purpose, ready to destroy anything in the way (not that I’ve ever felt that before).
And, 2) a similar intensity which says “I will not play, I don’t care, I refuse to compete, I give up entirely, I am nothing, I won’t do it.” (I wouldn’t know about that one either).
Many of us have touched on both sides, or at least felt the immense yearning for the power to win or succeed, or the power to refuse to play and to be very small.
But even if you haven’t felt the extremes…the awareness of competing enters into many peoples’ minds every day.
It’s called Comparison.
I saw concepts written right in front of me, in the story of the two leaders who raced to the South Pole, with their entire countries behind them waiting for the news of their success or defeat.
They wanted to be The One. They were willing to go to any lengths.
Which turned out to be Death for several of them.
“Every ego wants to be special. If it can’t be special by being superior to others, it’s also quite happy with being especially miserable. Someone will say, ‘I have a headache,’ and another says, ‘I’ve had a headache for weeks.’ People actually compete to see who is more miserable! The ego that does that is just as big as the one that thinks it’s superior to someone else.” ~ Eckhart Tolle
The way you know you are comparing yourself to someone else and having a little competition moment is that you see them, and something clenches inside.
I’ve had thoughts like these (some are kind of embarrassing):
- she’s made it in her business in her 30s, she’s way ahead of me, I’m running out of time
- he’s published four books, I’ve published zero
- she has a gazillion more followers on her Facebook page
- she has a ton of education to still finish so she won’t be my competition any time soon
- he hates himself too much to become ultra successful (in which case I might be jealous)
- I can’t believe with such a goofy haircut he was on Oprah and teaches sold out retreats
- her life story is so extreme I’ve faced nothing compared to that, it makes me look like I got stung by a bee and thought it was the end of the world
That kind of thinking, while so immature, separating and busy that you may want to dismiss it and ignore it…is wonderful to question.
It allows those thoughts of competition to live, and be honored.
Maybe the energy of the competition is there as a striving to survive, to master, to create…who knows?
So who would I be without these thoughts as I see the varied and enormous number of characters enter and exit my thoughts, my awareness, my environment?
What if I couldn’t even have the thoughts that someone is better or worse off than me? Doing well or Not-so-well? Us versus Them? Bigger vs Smaller?
The idea that there’s a perfect image of success vs what’s-actually-happening?
I had the thought that without such a furious feeling of competition, perhaps all the men racing to the South Pole would have lived, and worked together….but then the story wouldn’t be so exciting, or such a teacher, something worthy of museum display 100 years later.
And if the ultimate competition is to go beyond this life on earth…well then the British won. (Ha!)
The turnarounds to this thinking truly are “I don’t know” what is success, there is no better or worse, there is no end point to the win or the lose (something always happens next), it is impossible to measure anything absolutely.
Everything simply is the way it is…beautifully, perfectly, kindly empty or full.
The first time I went to see Adyashanti, one of my favorite spiritual teachers, I said as I came to the microphone full of questions and desperation about understanding All This.
With trembling hands and tearful voice, I took the mic. “I never heard of you before until recently, and I’m so glad to be here.”
He replied “I never heard of YOU before either.”
Love, Grace
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