This is a thought provoking question, and I want you all to chime in on it. I was thinking about my life today, and realized that I'm not naturally a competitive person. Competition is not something I think about on a day to day basis. I don't make work, activities, etc into competitions for fun. I will be competitive only in situations where I'm pushed to be competitive. Now, if I'm engaged in a raquetball game, or in XBox Boxing games (which I HATE to lose in) I will be so overly competitive that you will not want to even play with me. But on a consistent, day to day basis, I'm not possessed by an innate drive to be 'better than' someone else in some area of my life. It's kind of like Fitty would say, "Me I'm no hustler, me I'm no gangster, me I'm no wankster-me, I'm just me!" and me is not inherently competitive.
While I do lack a competitive gene, if you will, I definitely feel that I am a more compassionate dude. I'm not tooting my horn here or anything, because being compassionate is certainly nothing huge to celebrate. But I feel like I'm more compassionate than competitive, no doubt about it. I know what you're thinking: "Andrew, are you going anywhere with this? I could think or more pressing things to be doing than reading about your personality...like watching grass grow". I'm rapidly approaching my point of discussion. Both competition and compassion are good in and of themselves, but which is it worse to be: overly competitive, or overly compassionate? Both can be HUGE personality flaws, but if you had to be one, which would it be and why? I'll tell you what I think (I hear those groans out there, so SHUT IT!!) after I hear what you all think. COMMENT!
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3 comments:
Cliche alert: Too much of anything is going to be a bad thing...right?
What if someone is competitive with their compassion? Anyway, you're throwing out a loaded question here. These traits can just as easily be seen as positive personality attributes. If I asked my Id what would be better I would answer, "Ultra competitive!" If I asked my Superego it would say, "You should be super compassionate."
Oh, I get it, we're supposed to choose. Hmmm...saying compassionate sure sounds good. But, competitive people are all about winning and I like to be a winner. But, since I've more interested in the process rather than the results I'll go with compassion. I just don't care about winning at all costs, and that would seem to go along with being overly competitive...
Wow Andrew...I really think western PA is giving you WAY too much time on your hands...and yet still this is pretty good question. To be honest...can I go with neither? My first response is to be over-compassionate because the only person I would be hurting would be myself, but if I was over-competitive I would be hurting others and myself. But upon reflection of my gut reaction, I decided that being over-compassionate could hurt others as well, in a very different way, but still. So then I'm left with the way it hurts others and myself and I guess the lesser of two evils for me would be to be over-compassionate. But the question still remains for me: what makes a person over-competitive or over-compassionate? and even MORE importantly to me is WHY? I'm not about the action as much as the motive behind it, so when that's factored in, again, I'm left without an answer...
It would seem to me that it is better to be overly compassionate, than overly competitive. The major reason for this being compassion tends to flow from a sense of selflessness, where competiveness usually comes from selfishness. The competitive person constantly seeks self grandization. He has to constantly win, defeat another, and be deemed the best. The compassionate person would rather lessen himself for the sake of others. My personal Christian beliefs push me to the favor of compassion since it resembles the example of Christ's love on the cross.
Now there may be a bit over generalization here. There may be a plethora of other explainations as to why any particular person is compassionate or competitive; however, I feel that the generalization works and holds true in most cases.
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