How can we build a life together if we are in competition?  This was a thought I’ve had a lot lately.  This year has brought a significant amount of loss, potential loss, and anxiety and all of that has brought the condition of some of my closest relationships to light.  If we are supposed to help each other, to love each other, if we are supposed to create together, why are we fighting each other?  That’s both in general for some of my friend group as well as very specific to my closest relationships.  There has been this air of surging energy and power struggles throughout these groups, and since it’s kind of permeating everything, I felt like this is a theme we need to address.  The world is on edge and we are uncertain and being bombarded with fear—and there are legitimate things to fear as well—so we can only sustain that for so long until we start feeling some trauma symptoms.  Often we become more reactive and I feel that’s what’s going on, at least in my experience.

There are a couple things in this phenomenon that stand out to me, that make me seriously question the sanity of humans at times.  Some of these competitive moments are happening when we are fighting for the exact same thing.  We are saying the same thing and there is still an edge to it, like we are proving who said it first, that our idea is just a bit more unique.  Even if we think we need to go about it differently, we are both seeking the same end result and that point seems to be missed.  The other point is that we are fighting the very people we want to be involved with.  The very people who can help us are the ones we start pushing away.  Is this all a matter of ego?  Or is this some deeper symptom of misunderstanding and miscommunication?  Perhaps it’s both.  We are all seeking ways to be recognized and have our voices heard that we don’t hear what other people are saying even if it’s the same thing.  And we are so distracted that, no only do we not hear others, we often trample over what they are saying.  The speed of society (and the world at large) is too much to allow for people to speak and share with any real depth—we have to get our point across quickly and be the first to do it.

So that brings me to my opening question: How can we build a life together if we are in competition?  The answer is we can’t.  We need to ground ourselves enough to understand what we really want and to know what we are trying to say.  We have to make the choice to hear the other person out and try to understand what they are saying.  We can have different viewpoints and different ideas on how to get where we want to be, but if we are trying to get to the same spot then there is validity on both sides and we need to hear that out.  We are trained to compete with each other because we have some primal instinct toward survival, thinking that ego and being wrong is somehow equated to danger or death.  We need to fight the instinct to fight when it isn’t necessary.  That happens when we are grounded in who we are and clear on the goal.  It takes practice and discipline to over ride that response.  Managing those reactions and coming to a common ground changes the entire game.  It isn’t about hearing ourselves, it’s about coming to the right conclusion and finding the right answer.  We are blessed to have evolved to the point where we really don’t need to compete.  We have most of what we need provided for us or at least readily available—and a sidenote that we have enough to provide for others as well.  So put aside the ego’s voice and hear each other.  It’s often the same song, and we just need to learn to harmonize.