Dear Society,
I love competition. Without competition, life would be dry, uninteresting, and resemble a scone without jam. Being the best is my ambition, and I don’t doubt that this sentiment is shared by many. High schoolers running for student council, vying for a club presidency, playing a basketball game, or competing for the highest test score turns into tussling for college seats, jobs, connections, and promotions as adults. Parents want their kids to be better than their relative’s or their friend’s. Kids want to be better than other kids. It all boils down to numbers.
I spent a lot of time worrying about numbers. How do I measure up against my peers? If I raise my GPA another tenth of a point, does that increase my value? How many inches taller am I than x, y, and z? It may seem vain, and in retrospect, much of it didn’t matter. But many of us are controlled by these numbers.
My point is this—competition is great, it’s the thing that makes many of us tick. But numbers aren’t everything. It’s easy to get lost in an endless loop of counting, adding, and subtracting. Do you want to look back at your life and see nothing more than a puppet of your own making? Do parents want their children to feel compelled to produce numbers for their approval?
Dear society, no matter how much counting you do, you’ll always find a way in which you don’t measure up. Make it less about numbers, and more about doing the best with what you have.
-Anonymous
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