Don’t Ever Compete Again: A Message to a Friend in Australia
7 min readBy Biar John
May 14, 2015 (SSB) —- Everyone has competed at some point in their lives. We compare ourselves to others and measure ourselves based on what we observe them doing. When they look worse than ourselves, we feel good. But when they are better, we feel bad. Other times, we compete in order to learn something about the personality of our opponents. These types of competitions are rampant among south Sudanese, including those on the internet. This author has seen lots of guys rivaling each other over stuff for a cause never understood.
The consequence of these types of competitions is that they create toxic rivalries that result in competitors resenting one another, unnecessarily. In this type of competitions, we often end up being sore losers. Why? Because there are never any judges to decide on wins and loses.
Since there are never any judges to point out on the losers and winners, we, all, tend to think we are winners. Each of us often sees themselves as victors. And because we all feel we are winners, we end up building false egos. We, then, become merciless critics of others. And we become habitual, doing it until a day we are shocked by a critic even more hostile and merciless than ourselves. It is in such a moment that we are able to learn of ourselves being nothing more than real losers.
We all know how most of us don’t think twice before criticizing/critiquing someone else. Or how our tolerance level for ideas that are different from our own is practically non-existent, making us severely critical of others? Well, the truth of the matter is, there will always be differences between you and me. There is none that would dare saying they are 100% perfect. We all have weaknesses/flaws, which when we lose our minds and start misbehaving toward others, will be targeted to bring us to sense. You can be given one hell of a sleepless night, after which you become a measured person in your way of approaching situations and others.
Not wishing to be taught a lesson or criticized, we must preclude this by being, simply, aware of the repercussions of our own behavior. It is pretty certain those who have made this mistake have learned the hard way and would not daring repeating it. When we throw, unwarranted, negative energies at our opponents, we often do not realize how much of it we generate on the receiving end, to be thrown at naïve us, only to be caught unprepared, forcing us to unnecessarily clutch at a straw.
We might have the discretion to interfere with how others perceive the world politically and around them. But we don’t have any discretion to make up stories about them. There is no any justifiable reason for doing so, whatever the circumstance. If a person is a political figure or a political representative and you feel like you want to get them to correct something that you might think is not right politically, it might be okay. And it is so because a political representative stands for you in an electorate, to defend your interests, in exchange for a salary.
Political jobs are competency based, so if a person underperforms or don’t work for the constituents, they can be questioned or even thrown away. But despite this right, you are still, in no way, entitled to making up stories about their personalities.
Additionally, if you don’t differentiate between political view points and personal character, and you make a mistake by attacking the later instead of the former, you will always incur the wrath for that. And you know how terrible that can be, don’t you? That the results, usually, are ugly back and forth critiquing between you and your opponent who both, at the end, settle with nothing more than wounds to lick.
But it is not like saying that competition can be all negative and bad. It can be weirdly funny. It is funny how we forget how thin skinned we are, and we jump to other peoples’ faces and then start critiquing them, scathingly, sometimes. We, usually, do this without any expectation of a backlash. But when we are surprised with an equal force of a fight-back, we transition into something more of a self-defensive/self-proving douchebag than a confident aggressor we originally appeared like.
It can be fun when you see the critic loss control for a mild criticism. It kind of put a smile on the face when an invincibly perfectly aggressive giant gets crazy for something as simple as being described as being “bombastic” in his writings. And you then hear things like “Oh shit! Everyone knows how I write. I don’t write bombastically as claimed. We don’t even understand whatever he writes; he’s the one who is bombastic.” All drowning man’s sort of reactions and stuff like that. And then you hear his nervy friend on his side, being so comforting to him, saying, “Oh well, we are all animal farm, who don’t think for ourselves. The only perfect guys are my friend and Panleul Wel.”, in his defense. And you kind of see the conversation being kind of funny back and forth between the two, for quite a while. Now, can’t you see that life becomes so sweet when you have your back against the wall?
This author felt, really, bad for these guys. When you see such self-pity conversations, something starts going through your head. You are kind of like “Damn, their pride just got thrown to hell.” Whenever one has a goal and something gets in the way and basically sidetracks them, or whatever you want to call it, and they sort of become hysterically crazy like that, you feel, really, sorry about them. It is, so, bad when a mode of hysteria is accidentally pressed and you kind of see someone that looked very confident get so crazy that way. But it is, at the same time, funny as it shows how susceptible we can all be. May be we can call it a bittersweet feeling.
But despite the fun side of it, it is never a good thing. We need to know that the hurts criticism/critiquing cause us outweigh the fun we expect to get from it, as can be deduced from the reactions above. What we throw out is what we get back, and it hurts us in the same way we wanted it to hurt on the other end. Would you see yourself raided with a gun today and not try and get your own gun to defend yourself with, tomorrow? And if you are the raider and have learned the person you have been chasing has acquired his own gun, would you raid his neighborhood without a fear of similar wounds you inflict on them being inflicted on you? Of course not! There will always be some sort retaliation with a similar weapon or even a heavier one.
In fact, this author’s recent response to the original article from the dude whose this piece is intended for, was not the right one to response with, though it caused unimaginable hysteria in his camps. It was a place holder or a tentative piece before a fully researched toxic piece or missile of toxin was in place. We are all connected and one only needs a few phone calls before coming out with a shocker, in revenge.
This author was prepared to go at length. But because of the petty reactions above, he is treating the whole affair simply as nothing more than a bickering. It looks like the whole thing was an accidental bump into each other. And it was, probably, unintentionally in both ends.
Let’s not forget the Golden Rule. Everyone makes mistakes. Mistakes are necessary tools of wisdom and growth according to the wise. If you truly feel that someone is wrong, then don’t give them too much energy! Focusing too much energy on them only serves to give them more power and some ability to strike even harder on you.
Everyone affects everyone else, just like everything else. And if that is the case, then perhaps we need to understand why it’s so important to consciously choose how and where we throw our words. Are we straying and finding fault and tearing down on others, instead of sticking with the point? When we tear down on others, we, too, are torn down.
To wrap it all up, lets never fall into the vulgar mistake of making pleasure in collecting hearsays and tearing others down with them, in order to win petty competitions, for they will be collected, and thrown against us, too.
Case rested!!!!!
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