While reflecting on my social and work relationships, recently, a recurring theme has been the competitiveness the other party injects into the relationship consciousness.
They don’t announce the competition. It would be far too simple to say, Game on! I am going to beat you in this and trample you in my dust! They are far too secretive, underhanded or conniving to voice their true hopes of vanquishing me to a nether reality once they’ve won a prize only they were aware of. However, even though they don’t speak their thoughts, their treatment of me, their skittishness around me reveals their view of me as a competitor… as an enemy.
It is always astounding to me when I sense that I am seen as an enemy. I want to speak to their unspoken tension, “I don’t want what you want!”
But it doesn’t matter what I say or want. The other person has already perceived me as having a worthy something that they don’t have and therefore I am a threat to them achieving what they want.
What a waste of energy.
If they knew me better they would perhaps understand that, fundamentally, our motivations are different. For one reason alone I am never threatened by anyone, no matter how fierce they are in their one-sided competition against me: They have set their minds on beating me, besting me, or putting me in my place; and I have set my mind on being the best me I can be.
Who I am has nothing to do with who anyone else is, what they have, where they go or what they do. I don’t measure my growth, my value or my joy against others. I measure myself against myself. I want to be better tomorrow than I was yesterday. I want to move forward from any stuck position because I wasn’t created to be stagnant. As long as I live and breathe, I intend to become more fully me. There’s no room in my evolution for competition with other people. Nor should anyone’s evolution have anything to do with me.
