To Compete, or to Simply Enjoy

THE WINNER of this year's van cliburn piano competition in ft worth, texas is a twenty six year old ukrainian - always a young european, never an american - but a young american man got third place. The winner uttered the usual platitudes about the whole affair; winning isn't everything, its the process, not the final result which matters, its fun for the audience, but the participants have higher aspirations in mind, and such drivel.

Previously on this website it was reported that felix mendelsohn once said "competiton is for racehorses." Evidently bela bartok said that, not mendelsohn. Same idea, though.  The ukrainian piano winner also pointed out that competition permeates nearly all aspects of our lives, as if by so saying he was justifying an activity which is somehow, inherently...silly.

we compete for employment, we compete for mates, we compete for recognition, status, and positions atop the social pyramid. we compete because for millions of years our ancesters competed, with neighboring tribes, with each other, with other animals of the forest. we compete to survive, because it is the way we survived at the beginning.

Lest we forget, we have always cooperated with each other as well. Even in earliest times, the group was divided between hunters and gatherers, the bringers of food and the nurturers of children. In our modern world we know we need to both compete and cooperate, but aren't always quite sure which is which, and which  works best in what situations.

So maybe someday we'll figure it all out, figure out whether we want to compete on the baseball diamond, or just let the kids play, and not worry to much about keeping score. The disabled kid I work with loves learning to play tennis, but everytime we keep score, he eventually gets tired of losing, and gets mad. No matter how many times i explain to him that i have played tennis for forty years, and am very good at it, he gets upset at losing.

I play left handed, he wins a game or two, but its never enough. I want to instill in him the sheer love of moving the body, and hitting the ball, but...how? He'll have to learn that himself, like everything else. 

At the keyboard, newly developing piano players always have to decide whether winning is the thing, or to be content to merely play, to learn, to improve, to listen, and enjoy. And, if they are fortunate, they will ignore everything that the world tries to tell them, and learn it themselves, whatever they choose to know.