Tag: Competition

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Competition, by Ricky

        I
am not a “competitive” person.  When I
was a child, I enjoyed playing games where there was a winner and one or more
not the winners, but I didn’t care which category I was in ultimately.  I just played any game for fun.
        When
I was old enough to play Little League baseball, I was nearly competitive by
doing my best to help the team “win”. 
But when we would not win, I did feel a bit down, if I had made mistakes
that contributed to our failing to win. 
However, I did not castigate myself because I knew that in spite of
making (or not making) mistakes, I had done my best for the team and I knew not
winning did not reduce the amount of fun I experienced playing the game with
other boys.
        Just
playing a team game for fun still taught me sportsmanship, cooperation, working
together for a common goal, and helped to build my character.  I did not need parents or coaches who
believed in “winning is everything” to motivate me.  If they had, I am sure I would now have more
character flaws than positive attributes.
        In high school,
I never played on the school sports teams. 
They were all about winning and I only liked to play for fun.  The fact that I wasn’t all that good at any
of the sports also contributed to me not even trying out for a team.  I did play friendly team games during PE
class.  Besides the seasonal games of
softball, flag football, basketball we would also play other games for a week
or two.  One of my most memorable games
was badminton.
        The
PE teachers decided to set up two badminton courts/nets inside one half of our
gym.  They then organized the girls and
boys into teams of two players and held a tournament.  Eventually, the boys’ champions played the
girls’ champions.
        My
teammate, Ray Hoff, was one of my two friends in high school.  We first met in 6th grade and
continued as friends throughout our school years.  Winning was nice but we played for fun.  We would constantly talk to each other during
the game, giving encouragement, criticizing our play, and telling jokes all
while batting the shuttlecock over the net. 
Sometimes we were laughing so hard that the other team would score.  In the end, we were the boys’ champions and
got to play the girls’ championship team for our class period.  Ray and I continued our antics and had lots
of fun.  The girls would often laugh with
us.  Ultimately, the girls won with 4
sets to 3 but those 7-games took two class periods to play.  I don’t think anyone else ever watched our
games against the girls.  The other boys
were busy playing basketball and I don’t know what the other girls were
doing.  All I know is that Ray and I had
tons of fun playing a non-macho game.
        For
the years following high school, I still would rather play a game rather than
watch one.  To me, just sitting watching
a baseball, football, or basketball game is rather boring and many people take
those games way too seriously and kill all the fun.  Even when I play a board game like Risk or
Monopoly, I play for fun.  When it
becomes evident that another player is getting too emotional and is too
personally involved in the game, it kills the fun of playing and I’m ready to
stop.
        I
have given up watching team sports that are not sports anymore.  They have become big business and I find no
fun in business.
© 3 March 2014 

About the Author  
 I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in
Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just
prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on
their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my
parents divorced.
When united with my mother and stepfather two years later
in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California,
graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966.  After three tours of duty with the Air Force,
I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until
her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11-2001
terrorist attack.
I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010.   I find writing these memories to be
therapeutic.
My story blog is, TheTahoeBoy.blogspot.com
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Competition by Gillian

It’s just not a part of my reality: my
psyche. As far as I can tell, in retrospect, neither of my parents had a
competitive bone in their body. So I come by competitiveness, or the lack of
it, honestly. The only kind of competition they introduced me to, if it’s worthy of the term, was of the why
don’t
you see if you can do a little better next time variety;
competition with myself. So it’s
hardly surprising that I consider that to be the only contest worth the
winning; making myself just a little better every time.
I remember, back in
the John Elway days, the first time we, by which I mean the Denver Broncos,
lost the Superbowl. On the local news following the game they gave out phone
numbers of local therapists standing by to help Bronco fans deal with their
emotions. I was simply amazed. It’s
a game, for God’s sake, not World War Three.
Years ago, perhaps
in the late ‘50’s, I read an article in I know not
what newspaper or magazine, written by a Brit, claiming that Britain was a “good
enough”
country.
We had lost our drive for perfection and were happy to settle for “good
enough.”
I’m not sure of this, but I think my
attitude, which undeniably has a certain shade of “good
enough,”
in
it, as did that of my parents, and the country at large, might have stemmed
from World War Two. And perhaps a carry-over from World War One.
In a country
subject to harsh rationing during, and for years after, World War Two, meals
were frequently “good enough,”
and
that often required a ton of positive thinking. When Churchill reviewed the
rations he judged them adequate, until he was told they were for a week, not a
day as he had supposed. With one egg and one ounce of cheese a week, it is
actually very positive to be able to proclaim a meal, “good  enough.”
During and after
the First War, women took up jobs which were traditionally “man’s work.”
In
Britain roughly two million woman replaced the men who had left to fight, so
many of whom were destined never to return. Many women took over this work by
choice, but many, especially in country areas, had no choice. You had a
farm to keep up and there were no men left to do the work, so women must do it.
Given the situation, and knowing how hard all farming families worked even
before the men left, I can well imagine exhausted and demoralized women
struggling with overwork, much of it unfamiliar to them, tossing down the
carpentry tools or stabling the plow horse and saying it would just have to be
good enough. It’s
hard to strive for perfection when you are inexperienced, exhausted, and
overwhelmed.
I can imagine the
same thing of many members of the upper class who lost most of their servants
either directly or indirectly to the war. My Lord having to clip his own hedges
for the first time in his life and Milady forced to mend her torn curtains,
might well have finished their attempts saying, in effect, that it would “jolly
well have to be good enough.”
I very much doubt
that Britain is a “good enough”
country
these days. I’m
sure there is as much perfection per capita as anywhere else. And prior the two
world wars, the British were responsible for many inventions; everything from
Isaac Newton’s
telescope to the steam engine, spoked wheels to cement, chocolate bars, and jet
engines. Inventions may occasionally be due to some accident or mistake, but
they are rarely precipitated by a shrugged “it’s good enough.”
I often hear,
though, even now, that the Brits frequently lack that killer instinct that
fires you to be really competitive; to win at all cost. Britain still tends to
cling to the idea that it’s
how you play the game that matters, not whether you win or lose. That is very
much the attitude my parents gave to me. I have never lost it. On the whole,
although there’s
certainly an argument to be made that humanity would have accomplished a great
deal less, I think the world would be a better place without competition. I am,
after all, an unapologetic peacenik, and what is war but the most extreme form
of competition?
© February 2014
About the Author 
 I
was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to
the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the
Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised
four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting
myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25
years.
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Competition by Pat Gourley

Harry, John, and Pat  ( Photo taken 1983 in L.A.)

On first meeting Harry Hay and John Burnside at my home here in Denver back in 1978 one of the first of many teachings Harry attempted to impart to me was his theory of Subject-Subject consciousness. Specifically how this related to gay men but he could extrapolate to all queers when asked to elaborate. This form of consciousness was of course in opposition if you will to Subject-Object consciousness and the form of relating that invokes. This is what he considered to be the heterosexual male paradigm defining almost all of their interactions, an endless competitive game of domination and submission.

Basically Subject-Subject implies the ability to relate to another sentient being as someone equal with you and not as an object. This is something I have, with varying degrees of success, attempted to aspire to in my life certainly in personal friendships, with lovers and professionally. It is a simple idea really with rather profound implications for the human race. What sort of world would we have if we all looked on each other in a subject-subject manner as opposed to subject-object?

So why you may ask do queers have a leg up, as Hay theorized, with this subject-subject business as opposed to heterosexuals? I do think many heterosexuals do acquire this level of consciousness, but it doesn’t come quite as naturally to them as it does to us. Hay thought we had an innate tendency to this form of relating and that it first comes to fruition in our initial internal coming out process. Let me quote from Radically Gay (Roscoe,editor:1996) and a piece written by Hay in 1979: “I suppose I was about eleven when I began first thinking about, then fantasizing about, him! And, of course I perceived him as subject. I knew that all the other kids around me thought of girls as sex objects to be manipulated, to be lied to in order to get them to “give in” and to be otherwise (when the boys were together without them) treated with contempt. And strangely, the girls seemed to think of the boys as objects, too. But HE whom I would love would be another ME. We wouldn’t manipulate each other – we would share –and we would always understand each other completely and forever.” Harry could be quite the optimistic romantic.

Some might argue that subject-object relating is the natural course of evolution, the survival of the fittest. I think that this evolutionary critique can be debunked but I am way to lazy for that here. Let me just say that I do think humans are evolving, sadly probably not nearly fast enough for our eventual survival as a species, but at our most altruistic best we are moving slowly, kicking and screaming, towards a subject-subject form of relating to one another. I think an argument can be made we queers are in the vanguard of this evolutionary trend. A real test for us will be if we can bring this consciousness into the newly opened realms of marriage and military service. A daunting task since these are two institutions that are traditionally built on domination and submission.

Which brings me back to the topic of the day “competition”. I guess I view competition as perhaps the most odious form of Subject-Object intercourse. There has always got to be a looser. Nobody really believes the old adage “it not’s whether you win or loose but how you play the game’. Ask any Broncos fan.

Let me share with you an anecdote from my professional life in which I have strived, again not always successfully, to relate in a subject-subject manner. Unfortunately the doctor-patient and very much so even the nurse-patient relationship is one that is in our culture inherently subject-object. One small way I would try to counteract this imbalance was to never have the clients I was seeing be sitting on the exam table when I came in but rather in the chair next to the table so we could more easily relate eye-to-eye. Putting someone on an exam table and especially putting them there half naked, and perhaps leaving them for 20 minutes before you show up is a power move, a not so subtle game of domination and submission. This is even more daunting to do these days since many exam rooms have a computer screen on the table and the exam table behind that. Kaiser though I admit has addressed that somewhat and has moveable computer stations that do allow for more face-to-face contact, which is if you can get the provider to look at you and not the screen.

Let me close with a quote from my favorite nursing theorist, Margaret Newman, who was all about subject-subject relating when it came to the “nurse-client” relationship: “ The joy of nursing lies in being fully present with clients in the disorganization and uncertainty of their lives – an unconditional acceptance of the unpredictable, paradoxical nature of life.” I have no idea if she was a lesbian or not but I will apply my universal rule to her also and assume everyone is queer until I know otherwise. Certainly her strong nods to subject-subject consciousness and her noncompetitive approach to the nurse-client relationship give her a head start in the area.

March 2014

About the Author

I was born in La Porte, Indiana in 1949, raised on a farm and schooled by Holy Cross nuns. The bulk of my adult life, some 40 plus years, was spent in Denver, Colorado as a nurse, gardener and gay/AIDS activist. I have currently returned to Denver after an extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California.

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Competition Is No Good Except Sometimes by Nicholas

Competition is something I don’t like. I have no use for it. I think it brings out some of the worst in people, not the best. It turns people against one another instead of turning humans to one another for support. If competition produces accomplishments, cooperation and mutual support can produce much more.

In the just-finished Winter Olympics, we saw what competition leads to—a lot of hoopla for very little. If anything, modern Olympics games have lowered healthy competition to the point of absurdity. Athletes strive relentlessly, work their whole lives, push their bodies and minds to their absolute limits to win by hundredths of a second. But then many people don’t watch the Olympics for the competition; they watch to see the spectacular stumbles by elegant figure skaters and crashes by downhill racers at stunning speeds.

But what do I know? All my life, I’ve had that gay boy syndrome of “I can’t do it anyway, so why bother? There are so many more fabulous things to do.” It’s a form of self-protection. You’re not going to get picked–you really don’t want to get picked–for the team, so look the other way. I spent many a recess on the school playground muttering, “Don’t pick me. Please don’t pick me.”

There are things I will definitely not compete for.

> Love: There’s plenty to go around; why would one compete for love?

> Money: I have plenty, thanks, no need to get greedy.

> Medals: They just become so much dust-collecting stuff.

> Recognition: I’m already recognized in enough places.

> Parking Spaces: Unless I am driving a Humvee or a tank with a ram on it.

> Spots in line at Trader Joe’s.

> Prizes: More stuff to dust every now and then.

On the other hand, some things are worth competing for, such as:

> A seat on the bus: fine, if you must stand at the front of the bus, but just get out of my way, please.

> A spot at yoga class: how else am I to find the peace of Buddha?

> The bathroom in the morning: you’d better get out of my way now.

> A viewing point to at least try to see a great painting at a crowded Denver Art Museum exhibit.

> My favorite table at my favorite coffeehouse (no, I’m not saying where because you’ll probably try to take it.)

> Chocolate: anytime, anywhere, anyhow.

Though I exude gay disdain for competition, I do nonetheless indulge in it from time to time and then with determination fit for a queen. Life is complicated.

March 2014

About the Author

Nicholas grew up in Cleveland, then grew up in San Francisco, and is now growing up in Denver. He retired from work with non-profits in 2009 and now bicycles, gardens, cooks, does yoga, writes stories, and loves to go out for coffee.