This post is in a similar vein to my recent “Competition Is Healthy” post.
To bring out the best in others, sometimes you must offer them a challenge. In order to offer a challenge, you must be excellent yourself. Apart from sports and more procedural manual labor, no endeavor requires exactly the same skillset. That said, wherever you go you will find people of a similar persuasion who have studied some of the same subjects and disciplines. You can inspire these people to be their best by offering them your company or competing with them directly.
A person with a good heart, someone who observes ethical limits, will be spurred on by your company or competition. They will see you doing well for yourself and they will up their game to get on your level. This is a lot of fun and should be encouraged. There is a certain affinity for winning that is healthy and to be celebrated but lucky is the person who savors in their own improvement for the sake of it. We can play the game of social expectations and who is more popular but the real reward in bringing out the best in others is the experience of excellence and the knowledge that standards have been raised. We want to raise standards not for the sake of capitalism or profit but because we have a genuine love for a moral order and the true wellbeing of others.
There are few experiences quite so electric as being at your total and complete edge and being met there by someone else. This is called “being evenly matched” and it is in this fray that the unexpected happens. People dig deep and find something unusual in themselves.
The media has made quite a spectacle of sports and so everyone’s minds turn to evenly matched athletes. The truth is that we all can find our edge and we will all find an equal competitor, even if it is the Devil himself. Everyone who pursues excellence in a sober and deliberate manner ends up having a story to tell, not only just the people who do the bidding of bankers. The whole Western way of life, of freedom, of the homestead, of honor and innocence finds itself locked in the stiffest competition of its life. Some say the end is nigh. Some say a new dawn approacheth.
We have to find it in our selves to find the edge and keep it. Much is required.
