Racing. Isn’t it funny?
I guess they call us the human race for good reason. It seems we are always racing. Who can run the fastest? Swim the fastest? Drive their car in a little circle fastest?
It is an ongoing series of humans proving that we are better than other humans. We do it all the time, all over the place. Contests everywhere. Take the recent county fairs. Who has the best pig? The tastiest pie? The prettiest dress? The healthiest rose?
Sports. Many people are crazy about sports. Which team can run around the bases more times? Or shoot the ball through the hoop better? Which golfer can get their tiny ball into the cup quicker than anyone else?
What is it with the preoccupation to win at everything?
I bring all this up because, on this date, August 14, 1923, Paavo Nurmi of Finland ran a world record time for the three-mile in a time of 14:11.2 in Stockholm. (They would switch the distance to the 5,000-meter race a bit later.)
Anyway, his nickname, Paavo Nurmi, was “The Flying Finn.” Back in his day, he was the fast guy, the one to beat. He held the world record in the 5,000-meter until 1932.
Today, the world record holder is Joshua Cheptegei (UGA), with a time of 12:35.36. That is nearly two minutes faster than Paavo ran it 100 years ago.
But the questions abound.
How fast can we go?
How high can we jump?
Why do we need to compete?
Oh. Don’t get me wrong. I am as competitive as they come. It boils in my blood, it does. Especially when I was younger. The need to win was embedded deep within me.
But how? How did this happen to me? I wasn’t born this way, surely. I didn’t come out of the womb wanting to be the best milk drinker or to have the most neatly pinned diapers. I didn’t give a gooey poop back then.
Yet. We seem driven to compete. Unfortunately, competitions have the undesirable quality of being a “zero-sum” game. That is, for you to win, someone else has to lose. There also seems to be zero compassion among competitors. The winner takes all.
Regardless, throughout human history, people seemed to need to compete in one form or another, from the ancient Greek Olympic Games (going back as far as 776 BC). It probably started long before that, when Gork told Morg he could lift the bigger boulder.
I’ve Googled several articles about “why humans compete,” and in my opinion, none of them ever answer the question. Some say competitions help us prepare for life, or they help us get better. Other articles say that it is driven by incentives. And on. Of course, it is driven by incentives. Whoever wins gets the trophy, or more money, or fame.
But for most of us, when competition starts, we are very young. It is in our backyards, racing against our older brother to see who can touch the tree first. Or on some playground, playing a game of kickball, trying our best to win. There is no money prize, no trophy, no fame or glory.
There is only our desire to be better than someone else.
Where does this start? How does it begin?
Why do we want to win and want others to lose?
Or do we?
It is a mystery to me, this human race. It seems that if we are truly a part of this infinity, there is no finish line. No beginning. No end.
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“It’s not the will to win that matters—everyone has that. It’s the will to prepare to win that matters.”
-Paul Bryant.
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“I never did say that you can’t be a nice guy and win. I said that if I was playing third base and my mother rounded third with the winning run, I’d trip her up.”
-Leo Durocher.
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“To winners, nothing seems unpleasant.”
-William Shakespeare, ‘Henry IV, Part 1’, c. 1597.
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I’m gonna’ beat you. Wait and see. But why?
