Real Life vs. Reel Life: Comparing
Real life in many ways is more like the CrossFit Games than it is like CrossFit training. In the Games we have winners and non-winners; in the Affiliate Gym we have you vs. you. We are trained it seems from early in life to not only compare ourselves with others, but to allow ourselves to be compared BY others. In this we somehow allow the creation of a zero-sum game of our own sense of self, and we allow the scores to be kept by others as well as ourselves.
Kinda like all those singing contests now on TV; the judges are supposed to be judging only the contestant singing at the moment, and the contestant is supposed to be focused only on herself and the judges. Invariably though, both judge and judged compare the contestant with others, for this is an openly zero-sum game. Someone will only win because everyone else has lost.
I’m more than OK with this for the CrossFit Games, CrossFit as sport, and I’m quite fine with this for all of those silly contests (which I admit are a guilty pleasure in the White house). There is a real problem, however, if we allow this kind of process, this kind of judging, to be a metric for how we view ourselves. We have an unavoidable frame of reference bias that threatens even the healthiest among us when we use these externalities to judge our internal outcomes.
Why? We tend to compare our “behind the scenes” moments, our rehearsals and our trial runs, with everyone else’s “highlight reels.” We are not usually privy to someone else’s practice runs, the failed efforts that eventually culminate in the masterpiece before us. We cannot forget our own struggles, the efforts we ourselves have made out of the limelight, and we all too often use these memories as the “compare to” when we evaluate ourselves against others.
I’m reminded of a story that my Mom tells often and well. I am one of 4 children. We were pretty successful youngsters, at least in the eyes of the community, and at least by the standards then in place by which we (and by extension Mom and Dad) were measured. My Mom would listen as fellow parents bemoaned this or that child-rearing difficulty, often followed by “oh Anne Lee, you wouldn’t know anything about this; your kids are all [whatever].” Grambingo would politely nod and smile, all the while thinking “oh boy…if you only knew!”
You see, Mom was remembering all of the hard work that went into raising us and not really thinking so much about the finished products we became. She was focusing on the heartaches when her kids disappointed and the battles fought so that they, the kids, might succeed. The other parents were comparing their “behind the scenes” with Mom’s “highlight reel”, but she knew better; she couldn’t help but remember her own “work in the gym” so to speak.
What’s the ultimate lesson here? We all compare, and we are all compared. It would be simply lovely if life were a non-zero sum game where everyone could win, where winning is not necessarily at the expense of someone else losing. Alas, ’tis not the life we live. The lesson then is as simple as making sure that you are always comparing things that are alike. Your rehearsals with someone else’s. Their highlight reel with yours.
When you are comparing apples to apples you must be sure that you are either looking at the fruit itself, or recalling the labor required to fill the basket.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 2nd, 2013 at 7:58 pm and is filed under Crossfit, Random Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.