Competition? No Thanks
I'm not a competitive person, it turns out. I did go through high school and university as a competitive debater and then spent 3 years as a collegiate debate coach. I was pretty good. Not great, but pretty good. If you've never experienced policy debate at the univeristy level, it probably isn't what you think it is.
Now, admittedly, debate in my day was more formal, instead of t-shirts and jeans we wore ill-fitting suits and poorly tied ties. But the speed was the same, mainly because I don't think it is possible for people to speak any faster than policy debaters speak. Policy debate at that level is a sport, but not a spectator sport.
My point, and I do have one, is that for a large slice of my teens and twenties, I was involved in a very competitive activity. And, while I loved debating it wasn't really the competitive aspect that appealed to me. It was simply the mental challenge to myself rather than the urge to beat everyone at the game.
As soon as I learned the rules, I loved to play chess. But, as a child and teen in Fort Dodge, Iowa, there were few opportunities to play. This was the 1970s and chess computers were not actual things that a person could own. Let's fast-forward two decades. Early 1990s, and I'm in graduate school I get a little hand-held computer that plays chess! And now, of course, I can play chess on the internet. Have you heard of the internet? It's gonna be big.
Yes, I can play with someone at any time. They could be anyplace on the planet. The chess world is at my feet. But, it turns out I hate playing people. If I win, I feel bad because I won. If I lose I feel bad because I wasted their time because I obviously had no business playing them. This is not the psychology of someone who thrives on competition. A real fire-in-the-belly problem here.
jpj stories by John Jackson is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
