I have been killing it over the summer. I mean it, I’ve been kicking butt. Kids adventures? Tons of them. Writing? Second book is with the agent, and I’m working on a third. There are articles with my bylines everywhere. And the copywriting side of my business is taking off. I’m writing for a national radio station. All things considered; I am winning.
“Winning what exactly?” my wife asked me. She talks to me when I’m winning because she likes winners.
“What do you mean?” I said.
“I mean, what is the win? What is the prize?”
‘Making it to tomorrow?”
It was a very hard question to answer for some reason. I’ve always believed that life is a competition, but now that my wife has put a different perspective on it, I’m not sure it has to be. Or to put it better, I’m not sure it should be.
When competition is in every part of your life
From the very beginning of a man’s life, we are encouraged to compete. At least here in America, it’s nonstop. Our heroes are sports stars. In school, the playground is relentless. If you don’t want to compete, then you are ridiculed. You learn that competition leads to acceptance. But more so than that, winning a competition leads to attention. That attention can foster adulation. You are now the top dog on the monkey bars, congratulations.
It doesn’t stop as you age. By now, it’s a way of life and one that doesn’t give you a choice or not. You’re going to participate and there is no trophy. You compete for a space in college or at your job. One way or another, you are constantly evaluated as good enough or not good enough. Words of encouragement only seem to come when you dominate something else; someone else.
In the dating world, we are all competing for attention. The right significant other or the mate that will see your value. But as men, our value is determined usually by what we can provide. That means money. Al Pacino’s twenty-nine-year-old wife might insist that it’s his charm, which he has plenty of. But the money and fame don’t hurt.
Soon all of our life becomes defined by that competition. There is no downtime, there is only the next fight. No matter if we want it or not, it is coming. This is how our worth is determined and it’s killing men.
The suicide rate for men is three to four times higher than women’s, not that we are going to turn this into a competition. In the book Of Boys and Men, author Richard Reeves points out that harmful tendencies such as alcoholism and drug addiction affect men to a greater degree. And those men that do leave behind notes, they say in the end that they were worthless. In their heads, they have lost the competition and it’s gotten to the point where we can’t even define what the competition is. All we know is that it exists, it’s present in our everyday lives, and we are getting worse at dealing with it.
When the behaviors turn unhealthy.
A politician loses an election and immediately cries fraud. He screams about it. It happens now in not only national elections but in local ones as well. Conspiracy theories pop up, and people are harassed. Some people turn to violence.
A man can’t find a significant other. He can’t compete for whatever reason. His hate turns inward and looks for a way to not blame himself. He lashes out and blames women. He vilifies an entire gender. He doesn’t want an equal partner anymore. Now he wants a possession. He wants the trophy. He has turned a living, breathing person into an object that he owns.
A man isn’t paid enough to even support himself, much less his family. Society tells him to work harder. It tells him that his only value is the money on the table, and if he can’t put it there, then he has no value. He becomes unconnected and tries to find a way out.
We’ve lost our way. Not only in how we deal with competition but in how we value competitors as people. We classify them as losers, and that’s the message that they tell themselves over and over in their heads when they think no one is listening.
Too often has my worth been questioned by others outside my family.
“That’s a low-value man,” I’ve read in the comment sections of my interviews.
“Does he wear a dress?” others have said.
Those are the messages that I’ve dealt with. Honestly, it makes me mad, and I turn it into a challenge. Because a challenge is something that I can win. It doesn’t even matter what the win is. But at least I can fight and if I can fight, I have value. I’m competing.
I get those comments from both genders. You would think that stay-at-home moms would back me up. It rarely happens. At times, it feels like I’m on a solo team fighting against the world. The rules of the competition aren’t defined but it’s there because I, and a lot of other men, have been conditioned that the competition is the only way that I can be worth anything.
Now so many heroes of masculinity are politicians who blame others for their own failures. We follow their lead. It’s people like Andrew Tate that too many men look up to. Hey, it’s not your fault. It’s women. You should punish them.
Ben Shapiro burns Barbies in some weird man ritual and people cheer him. Jordan Peterson spouts nonsense and the ones that the world has classified as losers flock to him. Josh Hawley writes a book about modern manhood that is nothing but misogynistic garbage and it sells. This is what unhealthy competition looks like.
It excuses any personal responsibility and vilifies anyone as long as it’s not ourselves. And the only answer given is to destroy whoever is vilified. The message is that we don’t win until someone else loses and suffers. Suffering is the yardstick that many have begun to measure their success against.
I don’t think men can get away from competition and I don’t think we can see our lives in a different way. It’s tough to change when that’s all you’ve been taught. Healthy competition brings the best out of us. It allows us to land on the moon, make new technologies, and overcome incredible odds. When done right, we better ourselves.
But when there is no break, when every moment of your life feels like a race somewhere, bad things start to happen. I would love a short time where I didn’t frame my existence as a form of constant competition.
But like most men, I’m not sure how.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
Shannon,
Very well written!
Maybe all of us men need a different perspective on how to stop racing around all the time, for everything.
Realize what, “A Short Time” really means?
How much time in life that we all have remaining of our lives? We never know!
It’s called, “The Human Race” but life is not something to be “Won”. Nobody wins anything at the end. Except the beauty & reward of Life and Love itself!
Thank you.