We Are Not Meant To Compete

 

 

 

“Often it's also because you don't feel like you're good enough. This results in competition with others, as you try to show yourself that you're good enough in some way. The need to be accepted is a factor too, because after winning against other women, you hope to achieve the approval that you've sought all your life.” – W for Women

We are not meant to be competitive, but media and all the social platforms exclaim that we should.  It feels like we are competing for the very air we breathe.  We are bombarded with messages that we are NOT ENOUGH and that this would be the right thing, or diet, or opinion, or whatever.  We are meant to feel like we can not compete, but must.

If we feel like we re competing, it means we are putting someone else down.  It goes back to early existence that women must compete for the hardiest man who would provide, give us healthy strong and beautiful children, and support.  Are we just reliving that ideology but using it now to put other women down?

Do we secretly delight in others misfortune?  Do we go find the same style of clothing as our friends?  Do we put down what others feel is worth celebrating, in some inferential way? Do we do a great deal of “fat” talk?  Do we do one-up-man-ship inside our head while a sisterfriend is sharing a success she has had?  Have women had to compete with men forever and we have internalized a sense of competitiveness and when we could not win, or think we have won the man-woman thing, have we, now, turned on women?  Have we internalized sexism that Patriarchal cultures have fed us?  Do we think competitive winning equals power of some kind?

 When we judge other women rather than collaborate, we are acting out masculine competitiveness.  Do you feel that judging is just the way we should do things?  Do we hold our sisterfriends more accountable than our brotherfriends?  When we judge other women for making choices we would not, we are in a power struggle.  It is not the Feminine Way.  It is not the divine Way. 

Do we compete instead of mentor our sisterfriends.  Our ancestors were all about mentoring their sisterfriends.  Aunties taught the children more than the mother did.  It was the way.  Do we now, look at such things as a bother and that we are too busy competing to stop and mentor anyone?  Do we truly listen to our sisterfriends or do we have something else on our mind that keeps us from hearing them.  Do we fear their state so much that listening to them causes us to fear about our state?  Do we give our sisterfriends kudos and praised them for their accomplishments – their personal accomplishments?  Does giving praise to a sisterfriend feel like it takes something away from you? 

Are we building relationships and finding ‘our tribe’ of sisterfriends, or are we unwilling to make the effort to gather like our grandmothers did over quilting bees and book clubs?  Are we spending time with our sisterfriends in storytelling, in laughter around a fire, in gathering in informal settings just to be together?  Have we forgotten that a gathering of women are healers? 

Do we about others rather than to them? Do we snicker at feminine ‘put downs’ and call; attention to sexism in everyday language?  Do we realize that we party to feminine rivalry and have been for a long long time?

I have been guilty.  I have competed.  I think, as I age, I am better at mentoring rather than competing.  I am learning to seek out feminine friendships.  Once it was too difficult, too scary, to vulnerable to share pain, humiliation, sorrow, with women.  I have used my feminine wiles I relationships.  I see it all now.  I make a pointed effort to change what I have uncovered about myself.  I make sure I am open and not threatening.  I appreciate my sisterfriends and I want them to appreciate me.  I know my tribe.  I support and empower them because they support and empower me.  I am not the only one who is becoming AWOKE.  I meet all ages of sisterfriends who have awakened and who are turning to other sisterfriends, no matter the age differences, and are there to share knowledge of a woman’s ways in a competitive world that does not fit what their soul knows be true sisterfriends.  I am trying to work on comforting rather than competing.  How about you?

©Carol Desjarlais 4.25.22