Tag Archives: life

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When Getting Better Isn’t About Competition

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It makes me really mad when people are better at things at which I consider myself skilled. There is a myth out there (or, you know, a lie the world tells us. I get tired of saying it this way.) that says that everything everywhere at all times is a competition.

In this line of thinking, anyone who succeeds in something more than me is succeeding to my disadvantage. They are doing awesome things, and thus, I cannot. I don’t tend to care in things I don’t like. It doesn’t bother me that Kanye West is nominated for a bunch of Grammys. I don’t make music. He can step on me to get ahead in music all he wants. But if Kanye was my peer in school (which, by the way, would be pretty cool), you better believe that every time he got a better grade or a higher position in an organization, I would grow more annoyed and angry at him.

I don’t like that I am this way. There are a lot of people who aren’t. I was hanging out with a man while he did his job today. And he was so excited. A lot of his excitement came from the fact that his coworkers were some of the best in his field. That didn’t discourage him or make him jealous; it made him hungry for knowledge. Instead of being disappointed with his own achievements, he was trying to figure out how to use his peers’ deeper knowledge to better himself.

I liked that.

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Superheroes Are for Adults, Too

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When my brother and I were little, we made absolutely everything into an elaborate game. We made up superhero names for ourselves. I was Tornado Boy and my brother was Storm Boy. We were awesome.

We took the whole “Step on a crack, break your mother’s back” thing to a whole ‘notha level. The cracks were laser sensors. Atypically colored tiles were faulty bricks that, if stepped on, would give out to a pit of boiling lava. Video cameras in department stores had to be avoided or else our arch nemesis Crystal Head would know where we were.

The best part about all of this was how efficient we were at making the mundane into something awesome. Trips to get new shoes turned into getting new superhero equipment Batman-style. Trips to warehouses became secret missions into our enemies’ hidden lairs.

I was thinking about all of this the other day as I was doing random chores around my apartment. It wasn’t glamorous or cool; it was just boring.

I think kid brains have the whole life thing figured out.

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An Incomplete Thought About Being Exotic According to Musical Tastes

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There’s a race going on, and it has nothing to do with running. It has to do with media consumption.

It used to be that when someone asked me about a show, a musician, a book, a movie, if I hadn’t consumed it, I became apologetic. I went out and found it immediately. I thought other people saw it as an affront to my intelligence or culture if I didn’t know what they were referencing. I had to be in on the conversation. It was important.

When you are constantly consuming media that people tell you is life-changing and essential, you start to learn something. You learn that everyone has their own list of life-changing and essential media. It’s not really the same for anyone.

I really like the Dave Matthews Band. I started listening to them in high school because a lot of my friends were. But then I grew attached to them because I liked them. Then I got to college. And almost no one I befriended listened to Dave Matthews Band. Everyone else became really exotic and different and sophisticated and cool because they listened to the xx and Bon Iver and Grizzly Bear and stuff like that.

What I failed to realize is that I was just as different and foreign to my Bon-Iver-listening friends as they were to me.

Media should never be a race. It should be enjoyable.