Why I don’t celebrate the winner


Who is the winner? Is he the person who comes first in a competition? Yes, that’s how we define a winner and it’s that type of a winner whom I don’t want to celebrate.

But why? Are we not according praises to the person who comes first in 100m race? Don’t we adore the person who scores the maximum marks? Is the world not found wanting to make a hero of a person who wins the arts, science, sports or any competition?

Don’t we grade people in a company on the basis of performance and reward them and make one as the winner?

In fact we are all taught that the whole world is a massive race and we need to win.  Just to celebrate the winner we find many ways to define competitions and grade the winners as gold silver and bronze medal winners. Giving them prizes, boosts the ego especially those of the winners.

Where are we running? Don’t we realize that of umpteen participants, one or two or may be three are accorded rewards and the others, who are very many, are left so dry that it breeds dissatisfaction, envy, jealousy and conceit?

One may argue that the loser has to work hard and become a winner and hard work wins!- Well here I don’t want to subscribe to this purely as a loser in one competition, prepares well and wins another, but in every competition, there are more losers than winners. Hard work should define success and not determine winners. But then what is success and how its different from winning?

For every winner there are umpteen losers. Is it not? So in every competition, are we creating winners or filling the world with losers? If there is a winner then there are many losers. What the world has to do to with so many losers?

We may try to console, offer advise and talk soothingly to the losers as to next time few of them could win and so on. But what are we doing to correct the system that creates losers? How all the losers will take that and how many who offer consolation actually mean it? By offering a consolation that “you can win the next time”, are they saying that there will be a future competition that will create a winner amongst the losers and in turn create many losers again?

Yes competition by itself the bane of the society?

I win – others lose will make majority of the flock to discard competition and slowly mediocrity will show its head. Merit will lose shine and we don’t make the world a better place to live.

That’s why I don’t celebrate the winner.

So what is the way we make ourselves better?

I would like to bring forth another analogy implanted in me in my early days by my little known Balvikas guru Shri Ramanan from Chennai*.

He introduced me to this new analogy that everyone is running a race... a race where there is no competition other than oneself. Yes, the number of participants in that race is only one and that is oneself. The race for betterment is against oneself of yesterday. Competition is reclassified as Excellence and one has to excel instead of to compete.- and there lies hardwork and also Success.

Competition within self breeds excellence and there will be no disgruntled elements created. We all love ourselves and won’t like to see ourselves defeated. So would strive hard to be better of the same person.

Suppose I need to perform and excel in mathematics. I should practice and find ways to excel for myself. The person who helps me on that path is my Guru or Coach. I do mathematics better and better to get 100% and sustain it through ought. It’s not enough that I get satisfied if I score more than my classmates.

In short competition breeds comparison and imperfection but excellence breeds perfection and success!

 


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