Competition is a part of life. When you are
young and still studying in school, you would compete with your classmates for
better grades, when you get older and go to work, you would compete with your
colleagues so as to please the boss more with your work and get a promotion to a
higher position with better salary. Companies compete with each other to get
more customers and slowly expand their business. Countries compete with each
other for a better economy. Even animals and plants compete with each other.
The plants compete with each other to as to get more water, sunlight and
nutrients, while the animals in the wild challenge each other for survival and
mating. So, competition is part of everyday life, but is it really a good
thing?
The cause of having competition between
people is that people like to prove to themselves or other people that they are
actually better than the rest. People compete with each other so as to win, and
winning brings benefits to the victor. Some people compete to make their views
heard, like when in political elections. The representatives debate with each
other and try their best to convince the public to vote for them.
People not only compete with others but
with themselves too. Some people do not concentrate on beating their peers but
instead, they concentrate on competing with themselves. They keep trying to do
better than they did previously, therefore these people are not under as much
stress as the people who compete with the society. People who compete with
themselves get to set their own goals and learn or work at their own pace, and
as such there is not so much strain.
Competition causes good stress.
The issue can be viewed from another
perspective. The issue is not whether competition is all good or all bad, but
rather is how we can eliminate bad competition and emphasize good competition.
Good competition creates a festival
atmosphere, with all the attending traditions, rituals, and celebrations. Good
competition creates a forum within which children and youth can test themselves
against accepted standards of excellence.
Good competition involves rivalry, but
never the kind of rivalry in which one side can win only to the extent that the
other side loses. Good competition also means striving within the rules and
traditions to do the best you can and then, when the competition is over,
understanding that the winning or losing have little meaning outside the
competition itself.
Bad competition, on the other hand, should
be eliminated. Using the rules to gain an advantage, assuming that the only way
to win is to have the best score, disregarding the traditions and rituals of
the activity, and letting the outcomes affect you after the competition is over
are all indications of inappropriate competition.
-----------------received from- Ipsita Mahato, Batch ISC- 2005
