What Happened That Day?!

Competition versus Cooperation.

Competition
Synonyms: rivalry, challenge, test of skill, contest, struggle, emulation, simultaneous demand, suppression of another

Cooperation
Synonyms: joint, common, working together, active assistance, shared, mutual benefit


These two words are like the yin and yang of work. When there is cooperation, there is always competition. It could be obvious like in sports when you're actually working as one to be victorious against another team who is also working as one. Or it could be less obvious like in a planning committee; you are working together to make something better than before, but no one wants their project baby to be worse than the last project or worse than the other company's project, so you are in competiton not only with these other ideas, but with your own previous ideas. We always want to be innovative and new with our ideas, so in a sense, we are competing against our peers as well as our past selves to come up with better ideas.

There is also the ugly side of competition... when people are so wrapped up in winning that they forget themselves and get...well... ugly... It was brought to my attention that one of the teams got a little ugly with another team and when I heard this I was just like "really???" What's the point of lowering yourself just to seemingly get ahead in the tiniest aspect of the competition. But that's okay because we are all aware that competition does tend to bring out the ugly side of people. A lot of times we just need to step back and think about things in the big scheme. Cooperation uplifts everyone involved, friendly competition is healthy, but ugly competition sets us back as a human race.

Just a few thoughts...

Skee-Wee to the Sorors