Competition by Gillian

It’s just not a part of my reality: my psyche. As far as I can tell, in retrospect, neither of my parents had a competitive bone in their body. So I come by competitiveness, or the lack of it, honestly. The only kind of competition they introduced me to, if it’s worthy of the term, was of the why don’t you see if you can do a little better next time variety; competition with myself. So it’s hardly surprising that I consider that to be the only contest worth the winning; making myself just a little better every time.

I remember, back in the John Elway days, the first time we, by which I mean the Denver Broncos, lost the Superbowl. On the local news following the game they gave out phone numbers of local therapists standing by to help Bronco fans deal with their emotions. I was simply amazed. It’s a game, for God’s sake, not World War Three.

Years ago, perhaps in the late ‘50’s, I read an article in I know not what newspaper or magazine, written by a Brit, claiming that Britain was a “good enough” country. We had lost our drive for perfection and were happy to settle for “good enough.” I’m not sure of this, but I think my attitude, which undeniably has a certain shade of “good enough,” in it, as did that of my parents, and the country at large, might have stemmed from World War Two. And perhaps a carry-over from World War One.

In a country subject to harsh rationing during, and for years after, World War Two, meals were frequently “good enough,” and that often required a ton of positive thinking. When Churchill reviewed the rations he judged them adequate, until he was told they were for a week, not a day as he had supposed. With one egg and one ounce of cheese a week, it is actually very positive to be able to proclaim a meal, “good  enough.”

During and after the First War, women took up jobs which were traditionally “man’s work.” In Britain roughly two million woman replaced the men who had left to fight, so many of whom were destined never to return. Many women took over this work by choice, but many, especially in country areas, had no choice. You had a farm to keep up and there were no men left to do the work, so women must do it. Given the situation, and knowing how hard all farming families worked even before the men left, I can well imagine exhausted and demoralized women struggling with overwork, much of it unfamiliar to them, tossing down the carpentry tools or stabling the plow horse and saying it would just have to be good enough. It’s hard to strive for perfection when you are inexperienced, exhausted, and overwhelmed.

I can imagine the same thing of many members of the upper class who lost most of their servants either directly or indirectly to the war. My Lord having to clip his own hedges for the first time in his life and Milady forced to mend her torn curtains, might well have finished their attempts saying, in effect, that it would “jolly well have to be good enough.”

I very much doubt that Britain is a “good enough” country these days. I’m sure there is as much perfection per capita as anywhere else. And prior the two world wars, the British were responsible for many inventions; everything from Isaac Newton’s telescope to the steam engine, spoked wheels to cement, chocolate bars, and jet engines. Inventions may occasionally be due to some accident or mistake, but they are rarely precipitated by a shrugged “it’s good enough.”

I often hear, though, even now, that the Brits frequently lack that killer instinct that fires you to be really competitive; to win at all cost. Britain still tends to cling to the idea that it’s how you play the game that matters, not whether you win or lose. That is very much the attitude my parents gave to me. I have never lost it. On the whole, although there’s certainly an argument to be made that humanity would have accomplished a great deal less, I think the world would be a better place without competition. I am, after all, an unapologetic peacenik, and what is war but the most extreme form of competition?

© February 2014

About the Author 

 I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.

Three Little Words by Gillian

The first three little words that I remember having any effect on my life were "Digging For Victory" although, born as I was in Britain smack in the middle of World War Two, I can’t really have been old enough to comprehend the significance of that slogan except in retrospect.

"Digging for Victory" encouraged turning all private lawns and flower gardens, and all public parks and sports fields, into vegetable plots or small animal farms, in order to make Britain self-sufficient in food rather than importing food via merchant sea vessels subject to German attack.

The program in fact probably saved the British population from starvation as the war lengthened and the attacks on shipping became increasingly successful.

It also continued for years after the war ended and I guess that is when I remember it from; the songs, the posters, the pamphlets lying around the house and everybody digging, digging, weeding, hoeing, bartering a basket of potatoes for a pitcher of goats’ milk.

Of course, to me, there was nothing different; life had always been like that. We had goats and chickens and pigs in our back yard, and no flowers grew except for a tiny plot behind the house where it was essentially hidden from view and over which I know my mother struggled with considerable guilt, but she could not bring herself to abandon her beloved roses.

In those days I think every back must have ached, and just occasionally I still recall, mainly when my back hurts, a ridiculous line from a Digging for Victory ditty.

"And when your back aches, laugh with glee, and keep on digging."

A “V” for Victory campaign, another three-worder, was launched in 1941, though this was more one of signs than words. People were asked to demonstrate their support for the Allies by flashing the Churchillian “V” hand signal and chalking up the letter “V” wherever and whenever they could. People all over occupied Europe were urged to display the letter “V” and beat out the “V” sound in Morse Code (three dots and a dash.)

It was soon realized that the three short notes and one long at the start of Beethoven's Fifth echoed the Morse code for "victory". Those notes probably became the most played music in Europe during the war years.

"Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament", formed in the U.K. in 1957, is definitely not three small words and its slogan became Ban the Bomb.

Every Easter weekend while I was in college I traveled to London on a chartered bus overstuffed with students and righteous zeal, to take part in the annual peace rally. There was a wonderful camaraderie at these gatherings, but whether they actually changed anything, who knows. And whether it would have been better if they had, who knows.

Maybe we had it all wrong.

Perhaps it was simply the balance of nuclear weapons on both sides that kept the Cold War cold, and all of us from descending into some nuclear winter.

By the time I became settled in the U.S., the Vietnam protests were getting underway.

It was all “Stop the War and End the Draft”. Again I joined in marches, and eventually our wishes were met, though not until we had ruined a whole generation of young men. The term Vietnam Vet rarely conjures up a positive picture.

Ending the draft meant people no longer having to live in fear of themselves or their loved ones being sent off unwillingly to yet another Hell on Earth – three more little words that are not, in fact, like all these other examples of three little words, small at all.

But perhaps we got that wrong, too.

Now we still manage to create new slices of Hell, but those who go there are overwhelmingly the poor and uneducated whose best, perhaps only, chance of employment is the Military. Those with more to lose, are protected by those with little or nothing.

Hard to celebrate.

“Stop the War “ protests will probably, sadly, never disappear because the wars never do. Just the names are different.

Along came Iraq. More protest marches.

Two sets of three little words that I much appreciated when used together were “Support Our Troops – Bring Them Home”. And finally, as we hear the sabers rattling over Iran, they are home, at least from Iraq.

And maybe even that was nothing to wish for.

In Vietnam 2.6 soldiers survived their wounds for every one battlefield death. The ratio is now 16 to one.

Wounded veterans have completely swamped the VA system with a backlog of almost 900,000 disability claims. Almost one in three returning vets suffers from physical and/or mental injuries, many of them catastrophic. And one in three recently returned vets between the ages of 18 and 24, is unemployed.

Colonel Michael Gaal, who served in Iraq, said it’s always easier to leave than to come home, one of the saddest statements I have ever heard.

So in truth, by bringing them home, we have done them no great favor.

It seems that all my three little word slogans that I got behind, those peacenik causes I espoused, have questionable results.

As long as we have wars, there will never be a “right” outcome.

So my current three little words express what I wish for myself and those I love.

Go With God, whatever your own vision of ‘God” might be, and Live With Love.

With those I don’t see how we can go far wrong.

© 13 February 2012

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.