When you know that a very competitive person imitates your ways, it is something. But when you are not in that same environment anymore, it tells you everything. You are not forgotten.
I am happy. Really. Without the mask nor diamonds nor foods.
The same way I can't forget a friend, let's call her M, when she said that "I only compete with myself." That alone marks a person that recognizes human weakness and strives to improve even without getting confirmation from others. She earned my respect from then on. And my loyalty remains despite of everything. And when I said loyalty, I stand by her side when everyone turned their back on her. Even if she turned her back on me.
It is different when a person tries to overwrite what you as a person have already established. When someone tries to tell "I also have that such and such." When someone makes sure to pick up the pieces you have left and says it's all mine. Well of course, that person can only TRY. And try. Because it is a competition outside the domain. It only shows how "LOST" a person can be. Trapped in a dimension only one can hallucinate and spend ADHD energy.
Competere is rooted from the Latin word for the verb "to compete" which means "to seek together" or "to strive together". Its meaning has lost its worth when social theorists, most notably Alfie Kohn (No Contest: The Case Against Competition [1986]), and cooperativists in general argue that the traditional definition of competition is too broad and too vague. Moreover, competition which originates internally and is biologically motivated can and should be defined as either amoral competition or simply survival instinct. It is a behavior which is neither good nor bad. But exists to further the survival of an individual or specie in hunting, or behavior which is coerced in self-defense. Social Darwinists profess it moral and necessary to the survival of the species.
It is, maybe, about survival. And I am an epitome of a survivor.
Accept that.
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