You Want A Big Win in This Life? Then Relish in Your Own Prize!

If you continuously compete with others, you become bitter, but if you continuously compete with yourself, you become better

anonymous

Life welcomed me with some kindness.

I was born in a beautiful homestead sandwiched between a tarmac road and a canal. We lived there until I was nine years old, when greedy politicians grabbed my father’s land. Being a man of little means, my father had no recourse but to accept moving to a remote, desolate village. There, his life and that of his family began afresh. This relocation was distressful and disorganized my life in a way I never imagined.

It meant leaving behind my friends and neighbours. Changing school and getting new classmates and teachers. Speaking a different language and adopting a new culture. For the first time, I began living with my father. A man I hardly knew. He had moved to the new village when I was very young to clear bushes and build new shacks for his family. The only parent I knew was my mother, and she was not with us then, having been hospitalized for months to nurse a deadly snake bite.

My most significant loss, though, was abandoning our beautiful homestead.

Our huts were tucked in a canopy of magnificent foliage. Jacarandas, Nandi Flames and Cassias coloured our days and scented our nights. Neem and croton trees protected us from the vile and rapacious mosquitoes of Mwea. The mulberry and papaya tantalized our tastebuds in all seasons. Whereas the aromatic eucalyptus and grevillea marked our boundary and distinguished our ‘middle-class’ home. And a wide variety of local mango trees lined the canal, forming a beautiful, shaded walkway. On which we spent most of our days climbing and learning the tricks of a manly life: clandestine trading, waylaying thieves, and enticing girls.

On the upper border of the farm was a tarmac road – our biggest entertainment arena. My mother never wanted us in that direction for the sake of our safety. The road was newly built, so it was the wrong place for backward village children to hang out. But somehow, we cleverly sneaked and found our way without her knowledge.

While there, we did all sorts of wild things to the road and its users.

We told stories and raced to catch slow vehicles. We endlessly waved at bicycle riders and beckoned drivers for hikes to nowhere. We competed in car counting games, tallying until we were unable to keep count. After which, we lay flat on our backs on the hot bitumen, enjoying its warmth and unique smell. Only to be interrupted by the few vehicles that plied the road.

Our favourite game was chasing “tarmac water”. The mirage that appears on a straight road when the sun is blazing hot. We kept running after the “moving water” for hours on end, returning home late in the evening, only to find our mother angry from impatience of our comeback.

At times, boredom brought out childish chaos.

My big brother loved stones for the sake of throwing them. Flinging big pebbles was his favourite sport and the ultimate demonstration of his masculinity. And the roadside was the arena to show it off. Whenever traffic movement ceased, he quickly marshalled me to gather a heap of stones to prepare for attacks. The first target was porcelain insulators on electric and telephone poles.  He aimed and struck the fragile objects with precision. My taller and more powerful sibling had the advantage of target and reach. Within no time, there were shattering sounds, broken ceramic, and sagging cables around us. This foolish destruction made him celebrate like someone who had felled a giant.

We indulged in this dangerous pastime until a car appeared on the desolate road. And without thinking, our attention shifted from the poles to oncoming vehicles. We vented the misery of missing sky-high insulators by throwing countless stones at approaching cars. Stoning a car was much easier, and before long, we nailed our target. At that moment, we stood still and waited to see the driver’s reaction. Some drivers angrily cursed and continued with their journey. But others got furious, stopped, and swiftly jumped out for a mad, doggy chase.

That hot hunt separated me from my brother.

He loved running and had the advantage of longer strides. He soon forgot he had a baby brother and sped off, leaving me to my fate.  I, too, ran the hardest I could, panting and wailing, with an enraged driver in close pursuit. Most of them despaired after a short while, but some younger ones hang on till we arrived at the homestead, where we found my mother anxiously waiting to see the beast after her little son’s life.

Upon arrival, double tragedy struck. Mindless kicks and slaps from my mother on one side and the vexed driver on the other. Once they released their anger, my mother would let me go as they settled on compensation. My lucky brother disappeared into daylong hiding, only to reappear in darkness. His definitive arrival statement was to openly denounce his association with my misbehaviour. In most cases, he found my mother too weary to bother.

Growing older taught me to be clever in playing this dangerous game. I ensured a head start over my brother whenever we struck a car. This swapped our positions, and he became the vicious drivers’ visible target. I also learnt how to run in a different direction from the homestead to avoid the risk of double beating. I began to choose my target vehicles: mastering regular car numbers, body size, and drivers’ age. My targeting shifted to the ones driven by uncommon, old and overweight motorists—the strange ones who could never give an endless chase. The moment I stopped playing my brother’s game and focused on my own race, I became the sure winner of my competitions.

We have all been brought up in a system of constant competition.

Our schools set us on a path of petty lifetime contests. From the elementary level, the academic grading system consistently separates ‘winners’ from ‘losers’. The scheme ingrains a societal split, where we celebrate academic winners and losers get rebuked. If you are not good at books, or for some reasons you cannot do well in school (and there are so many reasons why children from poor families and remote places cannot), you are doomed. You are made to believe that you are a loser in life, right from a tender age.

Competition in schools does not stop at the interpersonal level. There are winning and losing schools too. And deep-pocketed parents forever scout for ‘leading schools’ to take their children and increase their competitive odds. And when stage exam results are released, the national media is awash with news of leading kids and schools. The visibly exhausted kids are branded winners and celebrated like heroes, regardless of the long, sleepless nights of drilled learning that undermine their physical growth and wreck their mental and emotional development. 

If you doubt that we compete everywhere and in everything, look around.

There is competition in every aspect of our society. Best place to see it is on our roads. The guy you beat in school is likely to be the most aggressive in outmanoeuvring. He will break all the rules to win the lousy driving contest, even if it means causing a silly accident. After all, who wants to be a loser in school and accept a beating on the road?

The cars we drive, the towns we live in and the hoods we inhabit all somehow demonstrate whether we are losers or winners in life. The schools our children attend and the courses they study in college speak a silent language. The investments and other life decisions we make are usually influenced by public judgement on our competitiveness.  We all crave to separate ourselves from those who have not made it.

We even compete in front of God.

The well-to-do have their preferred churches, where flashy cars and fat offerings lock out the poor. Worshippers dress for silent fashion and beauty contest. In my village, we used to call it ‘Sunday best’. Church has always been a place to showcase how ‘blessed’ one has become in all manner of materialistic expressions. The preacher will pay attention to the one who has more. Then comes the struggle between neighbouring churches where the loudest audio systems outsmart competition in attracting worshippers.

Our streets and markets are full of competing hawkers, each shouting themselves hoarse to outdo each other. Small shops play loud music and do all manner of needless things to muffle their neighbours. Bus stops are places of childish and demeaning contests by touts. Parents fuel rivalry amongst their own children, cherishing the more endowed and chastising the incapable ones. Our politics are full of infantile and dangerous competition for votes that often leads to death and destruction.

Competition is not necessarily a bad thing.

Life is a competition. Nature promotes competition as the basis for the survival and perpetuation of species. Our existence would not have been possible were it not for letting the weak die and the strong reproduce. That is why we try to make a good choice of spouse to sire a generation of stronger beings. The same applies to all members of the plant and animal kingdoms.

In our capitalistic economies, businesses must compete for the smarter ones to survive and the weak ones to collapse. We get jobs through competition and get promoted for outsmarting our colleagues. Competition leads to innovation and advancement for a better world. Competition is a necessity in our society, and we are all its beneficiaries in one way or another.

But comparative competition is endless and exhausting.

It diverts our attention to what others have and what we lack, putting us in a state of everlasting inadequacy. It puts us under constant stress and fear of losing out. Thus, our lives cease to be about us and become about other people. At any one time, we are scouting for what others have and stressing to play catch. We begin to judge our values and measure success not by our standards but those of others.

As much as life is a competition, it should not be a race against anyone because there will always be better people than you in many ways. We therefore need to shift our focus to better ourselves other than outsmart others. As much as beating others is a societal norm that appears like a good thing, it diverts us from leading a joyful existence. It denies us the freedom and joy of being ourselves.

The best person to compete against is you.

Racing against others does not lead to a win because no one is likely to notice except you, the unrecognized and jealous competitor. Neither does it necessarily make a better version of ourselves. Competing with oneself means believing that we are good enough. It demands that we put meaning in our lives and define our success. In whose pursuit we find true happiness. Because happiness can only be experienced when one recognizes a deep purpose in their lives and not that of others.

Competing against yourself means becoming a better you. Appreciating where you are and what you have, but still believing that you can become better. It calls for visualizing where you want to be in a couple of years and setting your goals and timelines along that path. It means constantly finding and overcoming challenges that will result in achieving what matters most and profoundly satisfies.

Decide what matters to you.

In competition with oneself, there is no failure. Only disappointments and lessons that lead to learning and self-improvement. There is no exhaustion because there is no race against anyone. There can never be a frustration for one is likely to pursue what they believe in and what brings them joy. And there can never be losing out because one sets the path and pace of competition.

Prioritize yourself by avoiding living your life other people’s way. Listen to your heart and chart your path to success. Determine your source of happiness and focus on its pursuit, committing daily to creating a better version of yourself.

Like Bob Marley said, the day you stop racing is the day you win the race.

The only race you will surely win is the one against yourself.