The majority of us, if not everybody, wants to be happy at the end of each day. It is what people crave. It is why the richest of the rich give up wealth and worldly possessions so that they can attain inner peace. However, not all of us are happy at the end of the day. Why? This question can, and will, have various answers, and I believe one possible answer could be competition. I think competition hinders one's journey to attain happiness, and we don't even realize it.
Competition has been said to bring out the best in people, but that's not always the case. We are too busy competing with others to care about our personal growth and development. We begin to define our accomplishments and goals based on the people around us, and not our desires and dreams. We think that competing with others and achieving better results than our friends and peers will give us happiness. While some may argue that this makes them happy, and the happiness that stems from competition is short-lived and temporary. As soon as we achieve the results we set out to by competing with others, we immerse ourselves in yet another task to find that "happiness" again. This is an endless, repeating cycle and the only reward we get is the false feeling of happiness, but what we actually feel is to do with accomplishment, and not happiness.
Apart from providing us with a false sense of happiness, competition also affects our mental and physical well-being. It induces toxic feelings of jealousy, hatred, and envy which hurt us more than anything else. These negative effects start affecting us from a very young age and become very difficult to overcome. Talent shows and competitive sport leagues instill competitiveness, and this becomes a habit. It is said a habit only takes 21 days to form, but forever to grow. This competitiveness has been a habit, for most of us, since our childhood, and outgrowing it only becomes more difficult with time.
Parents expect children to outshine everyone else, and children get lost in making their parents proud rather than doing things that they enjoy. Millions of high school students apply to universities worldwide to get into the best of the best. Each student applying has to compete with thousands of other students to get into their dream university. The mental stress each student faces through the entire application process, which begins as early as middle school, is nerve wracking. Sleepless nights to ensure good grades and an error-free application essay harm the health and well-being of each applicant.
A past president of the American Institute of Psychoanalysis, psychoanalyst Theodore Isaac Rubin is also a prolific author of both fiction and nonfiction. He believes that competition is bad for people too. Rubin went to medical school in Switzerland. The system was non-competitive and there was no "curve." The students were allowed to postpone their exams for as long as they wanted until they felt they were ready to give them. People may argue that having the ability to postpone exams is a bad thing, I feel otherwise. This ensures that people who really want to pursue medicine will give it their best and do everything to finish their course at the earliest. People who continue to postpone the exams indefinitely may never have been motivated to pursue medicine, and might even deviate to another field where they might do better.
A non-competitive system ensures the students don't deal with excessive stress. It ensures the students compete with only themselves. Competition affects people and relationships negatively. It makes people focus on winning and losing rather than learning, and putting in their best effort. Rubin says that competition is a residual of a primitive past, and in his time in medical school notices that the American students created a competitive environment by making bets, whereas the Swiss students continued to study in non-competitiveness. Clearly competition isn't natural, but rather a result of shortcomings of society, and human behavior.
In high-school, I learned about the space race, and how Russia and the USA were competing with each other to be the first ones to get to space and land on the moon. While this competition paved the way for some outstanding leaps in the field of space and aircrafts, it had its downfalls too. In the midst of this "space race," safety was compromised and this eventually led to the death of astronauts. The competitiveness between the two countries may have had a few positive outcomes, but they came with a price. If the competitiveness had been completely removed, the breakthroughs made may have been delayed by a couple years, but at least, the loss of lives could have been prevented. This "space race" gave one country short-lived bragging rights and nothing else.
The key to our happiness is connection, not competition. Pure, honest, and genuine connections with our loved ones will give us more happiness than competition. When we begin to live for ourselves and don't let others defines us, will we be happy.
