When I was a child, I was very interested in quite a few things. I would read and watch everything I could find about them, and absorb information better than a sponge absorbs water. One of my interests was the animal world. I had my favorites – elephants, whales, dinosaurs, tigers, deer, and tame animals like cats and dogs – but most any animal could attract my interest. Deer, chickadees, hummingbirds, squirrels, moose. I would even watch grasshoppers and ants carry on their routines. I watched shows like Lassie and Flipper.
I especially liked documentary shows about animals, as I could learn more about animals from them. Jacques Cousteau showed me the wonders of the seas. There was Wild Kingdom, with Marlin Perkins and Jim Fowler, introducing me to animals and birds of all types and on every continent. There were many other such shows, whose names I cannot remember just now.
One common activity on these shows involved capturing a bird or some other animal and then tagging it with some kind of band or small transmitter. The band would contain information as to where the tagged animal was captured. The transmitter would help scientists learn the movements of various animals and their migratory patterns. I never saw a show back then, however, where human beings were captured and tagged with a band or transmitter!
No need. We are now doing it to ourselves! Thanks to a donation from our diocesan health insurance provider, I was able to obtain a Fitbit at no cost to me. What is a Fitbit, some of you may ask? In some ways, it’s like one of those bands or transmitters that we used to put on animals. Some Fitbit versions clip on to your clothing; others you wear on your wrist – thus you tag or band yourself! Depending on the model you have, the Fitbit can count your steps, tell you how far you have gone, show your wanderings on a map, display your heart rate, and read your quality of sleep. All this information – and more – is uploaded to Fitbit servers. Perhaps some alien scientist, seeking to study this strange animal called homo sapiens, will hack into the Fitbit servers and, in effect, learn about us in the same way we have studied other animals in the past. Interesting thought.
Now, a Fitbit provides a lot of fun and useful information to the one who has it. It looks innocent enough. But it can have a strange effect on the one who wears it. You see, if you get a Fitbit as part of a fitness challenge – like I did – you can go online and see how many steps everyone else in the challenge is taking each day. I found myself wanting to increase my daily walking routine. The competitive side of my personality was being activated. I wasn’t sure at first if this was a good thing, so I stopped looking at the leaderboards for a while. Nevertheless, I increased my daily routine from about 12,000 steps (or just over six miles) to an average of 26,000 steps in June thus far (or about 14 miles). I had my best day today – 31,000 steps, over fifteen miles. I was feeling pretty pleased with myself, so I peeked at the leaderboards once more.
It was good news and bad news, as they say. The good news? For the month of June thus far, I am in second place in terms of average steps per day. The bad news? My 31k day today was blown away by Fr. Nathan March, who reported 42k steps! How could that be? Well, I found out that he is on a walking pilgrimage in Spain on the Camino de Santiago. That explains all that walking! He will be high on the charts until he returns from Spain. Then he may not want to walk very far for a while! I hope that his pilgrimage will yield many blessings for him and all those with him.
All in all, my Fitbit has been good for me thus far. It tells me that my cardio health is excellent and that my sleep is decent – though ideally I should have more. My increased walking routine has helped me lose eight pounds since I started wearing my Fitbit on May 14. The extra exercise has become a very good anti-anxiety treatment. Since I’m on the autism spectrum, that is significant in itself. I have more physical energy and more confidence in my physical abilities.
Then there is that competitiveness. For years, I have avoided situations that might trigger my competitiveness, because it didn’t seem to be a good thing to me. This little Fitbit may well be an invitation for me to look at my competitiveness once again, but in a different light. Is it always a bad thing? In what ways can competitiveness be a gift? Can it be redeemed? If Jesus truly took on our flesh and became like us in all things but sin, was there some kind of competitive aspect to his humanity – but without sin?
Some of my concern about my competitiveness revolved around fears that I would want to win at any cost, or think less of my competition. However, when I think about my own experience of this, these fears never really materialized. Yes, when I play a game, I want to win, and I can get upset with myself when I don’t. However, in searching my memory, I can see positive fruits of competitiveness. When I was a freshman in college, someone introduced me to ping-pong. It was new to me, and at first I was not very good. But that competitiveness helped me work at becoming good. By the time I was a senior, I was one of the better players in my college. In fact, I came to like playing against the best players, as that was how I learned how to play the game and to become as good as I could be. I learned that it was okay to lose. There was always another game. Besides, there was always something I learned from every game I played.
Competitiveness gave me persistence and perseverance. It gave me a desire to be the best I could be. It gave me a sense of myself, which is important in the life of faith.
How so?
One professor I had at St. Paul’s in Ottawa used to say, “You can’t give what you don’t have”. What he meant was this. Some people try to be self-giving or self-emptying before they have any sense of who they are. It doesn’t work very well. People who are self-giving before they are ready end up becoming merely passive. They have never really met their ego, or accepted its existence. Each one of us needs to develop a sense of who we are and of the peculiar blend of wheat and weeds that makes up every one of our personalities. We will never know ourselves fully. Only God can do that. But it is only when we have reached a basic knowledge of our personalities, and a basic acceptance of all the contradictory elements that they contain, that we then have a “self” that we can truly give to the Lord and to others. You can’t give yourself if you don’t first, in some way, have yourself.
So, I find myself inviting my competitive spirit to a place at the table with all my other attributes and foibles. It’s time to welcome them all – those I am proud of and those I feel uneasy about – and to help them engage one another in a good and healthy conversation. Only then can I discover what each attribute and foible can teach me. Only then can I offer the whole kit and caboodle to the Lord, and ask for the Spirit’s guidance in how to best utilize all the gifts he has given me. Including my competitiveness. True humility and peace comes from acknowledging them all, and offering them all back to the Lord, in trust that he will be able to use each one as a means to work some good for me and for others.