People give up bread for lent or fast for Ramadan.   In that spirit I have decided to give up competitive thought, word and deed for the rest of the voting season. This includes competing with myself.To give up something that is so entrenched in our culture will be a challenge so I have given myself something to shift into  every time I bust myself in a competitive mode. I will shift into community minded thought.

compete –strive to gain or win something by defeating or establishing superiority over others who are trying to do the same.

community – a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals.

There is a flag right off the bat, ‘sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals’. To think with a mind towards community I have to seek what I have in common with others not what I have that is different.

What are the elements of competing that we have in our culture? Well we have  testing, sports, games, gambling, being right,  worshipping hero’s,  masking insecurity by putting others down , market place competition, weighing and measure ourself and others against a mythical perfection, dieting, exercising and that big Magilla competing for attention – in families, the arts, business, charities, conversations, ideas, religions, politics, friendships, body image, status. Our own ideas competing for attention within us.

Is competing ‘just how things are’, is it the truth of human nature? I don’t think so. It feels like a runaway cultural meme.  We have downloaded Darwin’s ‘survival of the fittest’ idea for so long that his ideas about altruism and survival can’t find a root.

So I will be scanning myself to see how I come together with others and with my smaller community of me, myself and I with it’s dueling banjo soundtrack.

With my vote I want to reflect what is best for community not competition so while the madness continues I will clean my own house.