Competitions, Victoria Chang, and Mr. Beast

You win. You lose. Triumph. Failure.

 

This is the model created by competitions. The more prestigious a competition is, the more proud you feel if you win, and the more you cry if you fail. It seems contradictory, but you tend to put in more effort when the stakes are higher, so it's only reasonable that you feel down on yourself when you lose. However, the subjectivity of awards in competitions has always enraged most people. Beauty rests in the eye of the beholder, people say. While that pleases people when it comes to physical appearances, it kills their spirit when it comes to competitions. After spending hours and hours on preparation, what more could these subjective judges, these overlords, these game masters want? Do they not CARE? 

People can sugarcoat it all they want, but there's very little you can say to help someone get over losing. My greatest challenge has been coming to peace with it. I don't want to discount competitions for their unfairness nor glorify them for the experience they give. The fact is that competitions are unfair. No matter where you are, you don't know what biases influence the judge, yet you continue to participate despite knowing the inherent truth. At the end of the day, what alternative exists? Even when the biases are intentionally removed, people still have advantages. Standardized testing was instituted to "level the playing field," yet SAT/ACT prep companies have allowed students to gain unfair advantages by teaching them how to take these tests and providing them with exclusive resources. 

We can't certainly do away with these competitions -- nor should we. After all, the real world is full of unfair advantages fueled by money and influence. If we don't learn that early enough, we may stumble upon the world as naive and foolish.

However, this doesn't mean you should feel nonchalant after losing either. If you look hard enough, every competition inevitably allows us to find a path to improvement. It merely requires you to look beyond yourself. As hard as losing it is, it's what makes winning feel good, or does it...

I can keep trying to be optimistic or we can all acknowledge that sometimes chasing a better and better performance isn't a way to live when the rewards are just a better and better "plastic prize." Victoria Chang put it best in her poem "I Once Was a Child":

the boss

gave us special treatment for something 

special a lollipop or a sticker glitter from the 

toy box the better we did the better the plastic prize made

As American YouTuber Mr. Beast once said, "I think chasing a nicer and nicer and a bigger and bigger box to live in is a really dumb way to live." Chang's sarcastic diction describes the worthlessness of trying to do better when chasing something as replaceable as plastic; Beast's colloquial language aligns with this as he bluntly claims that material possessions don't make him feel satisfied as a highly successful entrepreneur. 

However, it's still about perspective. With all the counter-arguments I've made, one thing can be certain. Beauty does rest in the eye of the beholder. If something is truly important to you and the value isn't dictated by your peers or your family, you should pursue it, do your best in it, and find ways to improve.