Poetic, Inspirational Living

 I talked to my brother this weekend and found out that he had run half a marathon, 13 miles, the day before. By himself. Because he felt like it.  He’s been jogging on and off for about 3 years and in the last 6 months has been getting back into and there has been talk of running the London Marathon. But I was still pretty surprised to hear him say he’d just done 13 miles off his own back. I congratulated him and at the same time felt a twinge of jealousy in my stomach.

My brother and I are not competitive siblings. But there was something about his achievement that made me feel completely inadequate. My New Year’s resolution was to do yoga everyday, which I’ve pretty much been able to do, except for a few days here and there. My goal to get healthy hasn’t been thwarted so it took me awhile to figure out why I was jealous of my brother. In the end, it was a number of  things - the fact that he had already reached his goal of being pretty healthy in 2008 was one of them. I still have many a month to go before I can declare myself to be as healthy as I would like.

But am I really jealous? Or just more inspired to get myself dedicated to yoga again? What’s the difference if the jealousy pushes me to be more dedicated? The outcome is the same: I do more yoga. It reminds of math class in elementary school, where the teacher would repeatedly tell you that you had to show how you got the answer, you couldn’t just write the answer down directly. Demonstrating that you understood the process was part of what you had to learn. At the time it seemed ridiculously frustrating and a bit of a waste of time.

But we know that process is a hugely important part of how human emotions are registered and played out. Much like when you teach a child about empathy and apology. You don’t just teach them to say ’sorry’.

I tend to see competition as a bad thing in everyday life. I have no interest in winning at Monopoly or beating my boyfriend on the XBox. I’m one of those ‘it’s not who wins or looses, but how you play the game’ kind of people. But that’s not to say that I’m not ambitious. I just tend not to find other people’s success a source of competition. However, the odd thing will pop up that suddenly makes me aware of how much I’m frustrated with the things in my life I have yet to accomplish. Even small things, such as having a daily yoga practice. Perhaps I’m wrong. But I doubt it. My problem with competition being a source of inspiration is that it’s intrinsically selfish. While being happy for or in awe of someone may motivate you, seeing someone else’s accomplishment as a way to look at your own deficiencies seems to be a highly negative way to look at life.

Photo courtesy of flickr. 

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