Where does it come from that we have to be good at things? Why are we so competitive? I get that on an evolutionary scale we must impress our potential mates so that we carry good genes, so that we can have a good enough job to buy good jeans, presumably.
We carry it too far, I recently read a tweet where someone was complaining about people not being ‘good’ at games. That’s fucked up? Do you have to be good at watching a movie? Do you have to excel at reading great works of literature without moving your lips, or being forced to look up a word that you were not previously aware of?
No, because they both mean that you are learning and the last time that I checked that is a GOOD THING (TM). It’s like a film throwing a quiz halfway through about the underlying themes of the piece and stopping you watching the rest if you get it wrong.
Surely our experience of life is what we take with us, no one is going to be lying on their death bed bemoaning that they weren’t good enough at BombJack to make their parents proud. If they are doing that, they need help, and/or better parents.
It’s the same for creative/sports and leisure pursuits, it is so easy to give up because you are not ‘good’. No one starts out good, you might have a natural skill for a thing but that does not mean that you will be naturally good. It is more like a head start in a race, if everyone starts learning in the same place, and you have a natural affinity for the subject, you will be a few steps ahead at the start of the race. That does not mean that someone who puts the effort in cannot be better than you, quite the opposite.
I am the worst person to be giving this advice, I have given up so many things over the years because I did not think that the output justified it. As I get older I am finally learning to have fun on the way, which does not mean that I am always doing it. As Burns* was always banging on about those mice and their plans aft ganning aglay.
Capitalism is largely to blame for the feelings that we have, you must do well to make enough money, you must work harder. Be smarter. Have you met anyone who works in ‘business’? (Which has to be said through pursed lips for some reason) A good percentage of them are as foolish and idiotic as the rest of us.
As for working harder, does Jeff Bezos, or Jeff Amazon as I call him, work that much harder than you? He makes (If you include his Amazon shares) more in a second than most people earn in a week. Is that right?*
Demonstrably not. I am not going to get into the alternatives to capitalism here, as that is well beyond the reach of this, (Waves hands) whatever it is. My point is simple, somewhere along the line we have become disconnected from each other, from empathy, from helping. This seems to be particularly prevalent in the English speaking countries, why that is again is well beyond the etc etc.
We are seemingly revelling in a culture of “It’s all for me!’, forgetting that it isn’t. We all need each other. I am going to use an old example of how we are a knowledge-sharing society, not an arms race.
Make a cheese sandwich, from scratch. You are given the base ingredients, seeds to grow grain, access to a cow to milk and so on. Could you? Do you know how to look after a dairy herd, how to milk it? How to make sure that the milk is safe, pasteurised and kept in a good condition? Then make that into butter and cheese. A lot of us could probably make butter, although you need salt, how do you make that? How about making the flour? Oh, and of course you do not have an oven, fridge, metal baking trays, crockery to eat it off and washing up liquid and freshwater to clean up afterwards.
Now I have massively oversimplified this, but no one person could do all of that, let alone anything more complicated like the device that you are reading this on, or a car/plane/TV/Train timetable etc.
We all rely on other people, and the sooner that we realise that and start acting like a group of people that need each other to survive we have little hope of becoming a better species and working together to get off this rock and to explore space. (Sorry if this got a bit Bill Hicks there, wrong meeting.)
I want us all to be the best we can be, but to enjoy it on the way. Together.
Seems like I am an idealist, but if the alternative is to have the human empathy of a cold, dead and rotting shark then I am happy to be an idealist.
It is the only way that we stand a long term chance of becoming better.
Good grief, this got preachy, didn’t it?
* In the font that my word processor uses Burns looks like Bums. I am not sure what would be the correct procedure on Bums night, but I am sure it involves the great chieftain of the pudding-race.
* I actually did some research on this, brief though it was. If I look at how much some people earn I tend to get a bit feisty. Sometimes it is best not to look, opening a wound is never a good idea is it?
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