It's hard when you are not competing for First Place

I think I had forgotten about it, I placed it in the box I keep at the back of my mind and went about my business of living life, coping with challenges, and trying to stay afloat while looking for balance in this crazy world.

But it came back to me as the rush of wave crashing on top of me when I was not looking. It happened this week, when my daughter came back from her tennis lesson crying because her friend had won her 4th medal in class while she only had 1 up to now.

The tears in her face, that I understood but most people couldn't, did not come from envy. They came from the frustration of realizing that as much as she tries she will never get to be top of her tennis class.

She can work harder than all, put in more hours, concentrate as much as she possibly can, and still there will be people who are simply physically more gifted than she is. It brought be rushing back to my days in HighSchool, playing basketball in our team.

Working my butt off in practice, but still scoring almost nothing in the games. Coming earlier and staying later, and still seeing my friends (my very best friends up until the present day!) getting better results with less efforts. It is hard, extremely hard, to invest all your efforts when you know you will never get to really compete for First Place.

It takes a lot of tears, a lot of frustration, a lot of fighting with yourself not to give up, in order to understand this most important fact:

For many of us the competition is only with ourselves.

We keep fighting, keep improving, keep moving forward, to be able to look back and perceive the height we've reached. We understand that we're not doing it for anyone else's recognition other than our own.

The race is long. It happens in many tracks simultaneously. It involves all aspects of your live, work, friends, family, etc.

And the score...? It is based on values you find most important in your life, not on the numbers displayed in the score board or on the medals you hang on the wall.

I wish my precious daughter good luck understanding this.