Article January 28, 1991 Issue

Being #1

Who says life is a competition in which some must lose? Why can't we all be winners?

Robert Scott Lewis

Looking from my bed, I could see the picture of a lone runner working his way up a long, steep hill in the last light of dusk. My father had given me the poster in junior high school, and at the bottom were the words "To truly be #1, you must constantly strive to surpass yourself, not the competition." I was a runner in school, and I liked the thought, but I often wondered how it could be true about running, or about any other part of my life—a life in which competition with others commanded so much attention and energy.

I had been taught in the Christian Science Sunday School that our worth is found in God alone. It comes from a deepening spiritual awareness of oneself as God's child, from being able to see oneself the way God has created each of us, in His image and likeness, spiritual and whole. This view results not from a process of physical or psychological improvement but from individual growth in understanding spiritual reality as the present fact of life.

In contention with my Sunday School teaching, however, was the often intimidating, boisterous, and self-defeating feeling that in everything I did I had to be better than others in order to rate a measure of worthiness. In every aspect of life (work, athletics, education, relationships, and so forth), there is pressure to improve oneself in such a way as to be at the top of an imaginary pyramid of material success. This outlook opens the door to self-doubt and discouragement because it is rare that somebody is not a step ahead, doing "it" better.

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