I don't want to be better than anyone

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What overwhelms so much on "becoming an adult" is this intense competition we are expected to face. I need all time to prove that I'm better than others so I can get an education, a job, good grades. I can't not just be good, I need to be better and I'm resume to what I can produce, as soon as we can't produce, we lost any value. I don't want to live by that but I don't see how to not fall on it???

I don't want to be better than anyone either. Being an adult is overrated. I'd rather be a 23 year old hippie than grow up.

But not getting old is not an option.

If you stop competing, you’ll end up like me. I wish I’d learned much sooner how important competition is and had stuck to it ruthlessly. But it’s okay—the more others give up, the more I have a chance, however slight, of still coming back from my ashes and getting to do something worthwhile with the rest of my life.

EDIT – Typo.

Last edited by Spiderpig on 25 Mar 2018, 1:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

i actually already screwed a lot of things because i hated this feeling of competition. like i dropped out university twice because i couldn't deal with that :/

So your goal is to be the worst?

Or simply not to compare yourself to anyone?

As for producing, well, you have to eat.. soo, you have to do what's required to obtain food/shelter etc at a baseline minimum.

There are some people I definitely want to be better than.

^ yes.

I also want to be better than myself yesterday.

I want to keep learning, growing and improving every day. After I finished college, I went into a period where I got into a serious rut. Year after year, I saw myself making no progress toward everyday, ordinary life. It made me very depressed. I am still not where I need to be, but I have definitely improved a lot in a short period of time.

i want everyone to be good enough
me included
i want to feel free to share and that people share things too
no competition

i want to produce things but i don't want to have such a huge pressure over it
it's not fair. society can produce a lot in order to give food and shelter to everyone without us need to kill ourselves in work
a lot of work that exists is actually pointless just to feed a system

If you want to fix that, which is no small undertaking, you'll have to be ... better than all the people who just go mindlessly through the system

Not everyone is good enough. That's reality. That's how some people are better than others by whatever metric or criteria you measure by. That's why there are winners and losers at everything in life. We don't end every baseball game in a tie; one team wins and the other loses.

Feel free to share. Just acknowledge that some things you share may reveal vulnerabilities that unpleasant people may attack.

That's not the way the world works. Not for humans or animals or plants or bacteria etc. Everyone and everything is in constant competition for resources. Some people come out on top, others are relegated to the bottom.

So produce whatever you want to at whatever pace you want to. Just accept that if you don't produce enough to meet your basic needs for survival that you won't have those basic needs met and may go without food, shelter, clothing, or medicine. The only pressure we really have is to produce the baseline minimum required for food/clothing/shelter/medicine. Beyond that is entirely lifestyle choices to work more & earn more. I have friends who have only worked as minimally required of them to survive, never owned a car, and spend as much time at the beach relaxing as possible. I know another guy who for at least 25 years has lived in a volkswagen van and spent his entire time throwing frisbees and playing music at the beach - a true hippy in every sense of the word. He's ~70 years old and happy and healthy enough. My best guess is that he has survived by collecting welfare, but I don't know for sure. I assumed he was retired from a career, but was recently informed that he's been hanging out at the beach for at least 25 years. He's definitely one of the healthiest lazy people I have ever met - good for him if he's happy with his lifestyle & choices.

Ever heard the expression "Life's not fair." ? That's life. People have to work and produce and earn their way whether earning dollars or subsistence farming or they don't have the resources required to stay alive and they die. Society has the capability of producing more than enough, but why should it be on the burden of others to provide for you because you don't want to produce for yourself? True, there are many pointless jobs, but people do them because the point of them is earning the money they need in our capitalist society to provide for themselves and their families.

i understand that this is how things happen in practice, but i just want to be sad over it. because i want people to be more gentle to each other, and having better work ethics and a sense of community.

we can still be productive without all this competitive pressure. i guess i actually feel a lot of it because my career is stupid and useless and for rich people. i wish i had went to study something more practical and useful. i want to work in public sector because things are more clear than in private sector, or maybe i'll try to just run a self-sustaining farm – but i like urban life.

I think I know what your talking about. I was born with aLOT of disabilities & I just s#ck in comparison to the average person. I was looking for a job for a long time before I got my 1st one & had parents on my back about how I wasn't trying because I was lazy & wanting to be dependent on them for the rest of my life. I was a workaholic when I was working & was working over 9 hours a day 6 days a week when I was allowed to & we were shorthanded because I felt the need to prove myself to my job & myself. I got taken advantage of by management & was forced out around the time they wanted to get rid of my department cuz I would of had problems working in others. I'm on Social Security Disability now & am alot happier living with my girlfriend than I ever was working. It's NOT that I don't want to do anything with my life but I need to do the rite thing that allows me time to focus on myself & my girlfriend since she has disabilities too. She compares herself to others aLOT & it contributes to her depression which makes it even harder for her to do basic stuff she needs to do in life. She's always worrying about how she's useless & that the people in charge want her to die so she wouldn't continue to be a drain on resources. Comparing herself to everyone else just makes her more depressed & it makes me depressed too. We'd much rather a system where everyone worked together to do what they can to better society while being able to focus on themselves. At least we're getting by thanx to gov assistance but that will all be abolished if Trump gets his way. We'll worry about it if/when it happens.

There's a reason why people say not to compare yourself to others, only to who you used to be.

Very good point. If I compare myself to others, in some ways I'm less independent because I'm not working for my own income. But if I compare myself to how I used to be, I'm more independent in daily living/life. I might be even more independent if I was working but I still see progress & feel like I should try to enjoy life instead of just trying to improve for the sake of improvement. It's harder for my girlfriend thou cuz her conditions might could get worse whereas mine are more stable. I see progress thou even if she doesn't see it. I think sometimes we can be so focused on our faults that we need others to point out where we're improving.

Not comparing yourself with others is yet another of those irrational thought stoppers most people are so fond of, on par with "positive thinking". I'll compare myself with whomever I like, thank you very much. The more comparisons, the better you know how well or badly you're doing. If I could, I'd gladly be better than everyone else at everything. I can only appreciate it if others wilfully shoot themselves in the foot, since it makes matters easier for me.