Bowling Alone
Recently I had the opportunity to attend a bowling event. I am still not socializing indoors very much, but given the circumstances I decided to attend. I hoped there would be sufficient airflow in the space, and also I was obligated to spend other time indoors with this same group of people. I expect to see how stupid that idea was shortly.
I had seen other people bowl but had never bowled myself. I was pretty bad, but after a few frames started to get the hang of aiming the ball at the pins and not the gutter. I was in a group of five other people, and at one point I had the second-highest score in the group. That is when everything went south. Instead of focusing on how to play the game, and on cheering my teammates on, the competitive switch in my head flipped and I started worrying about how to maintain my position.
I hate this. I am a terrible competitor. When things are easy for me then I gloat. When things are difficult for me then I am a sore loser. I obsess over my rankings instead of having fun. This event was clearly not intended to be competitive (several of us had never bowled before, and it showed) but because our scores were listed and ranked I started comparing myself to others. There were even points at which I secretly hoped my teammates would bowl poorly so that I could maintain my ranking, instead of hoping that they would bowl well so we could celebrate their successes.
One response to these bad reactions would be to put me in more competitive situations so I can learn to be a better sport. I take the opposite approach. I know I get competitive and I hate it, so I avoid these kinds of situations as much as possible. I never liked team sports at school (partially because I was so bad at them) and I don't like getting caught up in spectator sports now. Even when following the FGC for a while I could sense this toxic competitiveness bubbling up, and I don't even play fighting games!
There have been instances when I felt good while competing, but they have been rare, and they weren't quantified.
The title of this post refers to Robert Putnam's famous book Bowling Alone. Although I have not actually read the book, my understanding is that it is a sociological study that claimed American interests in group activities has diminished over the decades. There are many examples of this, but the titular one was the decreased participation in bowling leagues; instead of getting together with friends to play together, people were going to bowling alleys alone. Having gone through this experience, I can confirm that I would probably have been better off if I had been bowling alone and not in a group. I might have been stressed because I was throwing so many gutter balls, but at least I would not have been comparing myself to others and wishing ill-will on them.
On the other hand, if it had not been for this group I would not have gone bowling at all. It seems like an interesting pasttime, and I can see value in learning how to control the ball better, but it is yet another expensive hobby.
Especially pre-COVID, I did enjoy certain group activities. I attended user groups, where we would gather to learn about a topic. I attended work-bee activities where we would be together to achieve a common goal like growing a garden or fixing laptops or repairing bicycles or building houses. It is possible to turn all of these into competitions as well (anything can be gamified) but the activities I gravitated towards tended to be noncompetitive.
Similarly, although I ride my bike a lot I strongly prefer biking by myself rather than in a group. Unlike walking, it is difficult to maintain conversations on bike rides, and I have a natural tendency to compare my speed (or lack thereof) to others in the group.
I am sure it is possible to enjoy competition without getting too emotionally invested in it. Even during the bowling event I occasionally was able to push the competitive thoughts aside long enough to appreciate the skill of others, or to focus on improving my own technique. But this took effort, and the competitive feelings I had made the event much less fun.
It seems important to suppress (or expunge) these competitive thoughts, because they poison my experiences. There is no doubt some Buddhist technique here about quieting the comparing mind, but I doubt I will follow through on practicing them. I suspect this is going to remain a weakness of mine for the rest of my life.
Sure enough, I did not maintain my high position for long, and I finished well in the bottom half of our group. Fortunately I did not have a meltdown over that because I had never bowled before, and had no real expectation of winning. But I did feel that sense of disappointment over not doing better.
Writing this out has revealed something else. Although I engage in some personal list-making (recording bike rides, spending, etc) as a general rule I despise the "quantified self" movement, and dislike quantified rules in general. Although I collect some quantifiable data I rarely engage in data analysis, and this is probably why. Similarly, I am grateful that I avoided using my paycheque as a metric for much other than being able to pay my bills. I know that I am now rich, but I am probably not the richest, and I want to remain okay with that.