I like to win. I do not mean I gen­er­ally enjoy doing so or that it is fun to win, I mean I _like_ to win. A lot. If I am not win­ning I become frus­trated, con­sumed with thoughts on how to win. As long as I can remem­ber I have been com­pet­ing, not against any­one, but rather, with myself. When I was in school I had to be the fast­est at Mad Minute. (Mad Minute was a game, or at least I liked to call it a game where every­one in the classroom was given a piece of paper with twenty to thirty math­em­at­ical ques­tions of addi­tion, sub­trac­tion, mul­ti­plic­a­tion and divi­sion and each per­son had to com­plete all ques­tions prop­erly within the one minute.) I can recall the excite­ment as the piece of paper was handed back to me and the thrill of speed­ing through each cal­cu­lated answer; it was a third grade euphoric high. I was the first per­son to com­plete the little “test” and with each new game I pushed myself to fin­ish quicker and quicker and quicker. My incess­ant need to excel con­tin­ued through­out school, up into my uni­ver­sity days where I would seek out fel­low stu­dents, learn­ing what he or she had attained on an exam, a lab, a report, a paper and I would com­pare that score to my very own and then place a new goal to attain, one which placed me at the top, above even my highest of grades.

I liked win­ning these races. I thrived on it because I knew I could attain it. Yes, it was dif­fi­cult and I even had tutors for most of my high school years and even dur­ing University. Still, acquir­ing the skills and the know­ledge to out per­form another or myself was simply a mat­ter of learn­ing the basics of how to study, what to study and how to write what a pro­fessor wants to read. Outside the world of aca­demia the abil­ity to con­quer life Olympics takes a few more tal­ents and skills, ones much harder to attain.

Harder, because on the grid­iron of life we are not meas­ured simply by know­ledge but by emo­tions, by reac­tions, by reas­on­ing by susten­ance (what we bring forth, what we can offer). Perhaps this is why, when I first star­ted this journal and even to this day, I become nervous when I sit down to dis­close an exper­i­ence or when I feel a nag­ging sense of doubt right before my cursor traces over the “pub­lish” icon.

When I allow myself to reveal areas of my life I tend to pon­der about the sig­ni­fic­ance of my exper­i­ences and whether or not they serve a pur­pose and yes even if what I com­mu­nic­ate is done clearly, con­cise and with as few errors as pos­sible. I think about this each time I log back into my journal and my eyes quickly scan the vot­ing num­ber attached to my entries. Generally I am con­tent with a 5/7 scor­ing; how­ever, any­thing lower and I ques­tion my expres­sions, my value, as I did this even­ing when I wit­nessed I had received a 2/7 on my most recent post.

Pardon me? A 2/7; 28%, a fail­ing grade. Immediately I read over the pub­lished frag­ments. I paused, feel­ing slighted by such a vote, not under­stand­ing how some­thing that was cre­ated through hon­esty, descrip­tions which car­ried great value to me could attain a scor­ing of such minute num­bers? I con­fess, at first glance I was angry and I instantly became defens­ive. I did not like that someone did not enjoy what I wrote and my tongue lashed out at the grade I believed had so unfairly been branded upon me.

I played with the words etched upon my screen, try­ing to under­stand how someone would not see the sig­ni­fic­ance to what I wrote; how­ever, as time slowly ticked by, I found myself nuzzled in that ugly cess­pool of “los­ing”. To me, this judg­ment of “2” indic­ated that I was in fact los­ing and los­ing, quite simply put, is not an option. Immediately I opened a new page to my journal, bound and determ­ined to pro­duce an opera of expres­sions, elo­quently dis­played for all to read. That was what I _wanted_ to do, ached to com­plete and yet, I sat motion­less before the pale glim­mer of black on white, unable to pro­duce even a simple phrase.

After much debate, with myself, I refused to be defeated and instead moved towards a new altern­at­ive to win: remove the vot­ing sys­tem. This of course would mean I would need to speak with Master for he was the one who placed such an instru­ment to my journal. I had faith that Master would say yes; how­ever, much to my dis­may he did not. I pleaded, still want­ing to win, want­ing to remove such a tool of meas­ure­ment, unfor­tu­nately for me, such a request was not gran­ted. Master explained that he liked the vot­ing sys­tem and that it is not meant to bring out a com­pet­it­ive­ness but to act as a tool to learn, to simply learn.

Now in the past, that answer would have left me defeated, left me angry and feel­ing incom­pet­ent. Having that HUGE “2/7″ score glar­ing at me each time I logged on to my journal would have left me ques­tion­ing everything I wrote, all that slipped past my fin­ger­tips. This time; how­ever, my frus­tra­tion dis­sip­ated quickly and I was able to remove myself from that score and grade myself on response, reac­tion and accept­ance. This was an entirely new grad­ing sys­tem but one I felt was just as import­ant as any num­ber ever was. And yes, per­haps on con­tent or writ­ten struc­ture or even interest I am a 28%, but, in growth, well now, I am way up there.. not quite the home stretch but get­ting close.

My blue rib­bons of excel­lence, of first place, might have come by easier dur­ing my aca­demic career but I am impressed right now with the fact that I am still par­ti­cip­at­ing.. always mak­ing an effort.. always striving.

~His grace

pink
end­less rib­bons of liquid
bub­bling up
gurg­ling in her lungs
encas­ing, nay trap­ping
the skel­eton
wrap­ping tightly
tighter still around each thought
dimin­ish­ing the image
all while mold­ing -
and reshap­ing
the pink con­crete
so stub­bornly sound
yet when tempered
ever eas­ily transformed.