It's Not a Contest

In high school, well, all growing up, really, life seems like a race or a contest. Who has the best grades, who's wearing designer clothes, who made the team, whose boyfriend is cuter, more popular? Who doesn't have a boyfriend? It seems it's all about the boyfriend -- but not because you like him. Because you WON him. You beat out the other girls, and she with the best boyfriend wins.

So my guilty pleasure teenage tv show is Secret Life of the American Teenager. And the girls, in typical teenaged tv fashion, fall in and out of love with each others' boyfriends and baby daddies from episode to episode. And they finally called each other on it, on dating (and sexing up) boys just to make the other girl mad, not because they care about the boy. And it only hurts them in the long run. And it really made me think.

Turns out, life (and love) is not a contest. It's more like a matching game. Some people get flipped over once - boom! - match. Some people get flipped over lots, but no bueno. Some people don't get flipped over for a long time. And that's okay. Our match is not necessarily better or worse than anyone else. Just like in the matching game, all matches have equal points. It's in finding the match that we 'win' so to speak, and become happy. And truly happy people would want others to be happy to, wouldn't they?

And so, just remember. It's not a contest; it's your life.

Look forward to my next post in this series: It's Not a Race.