LIFE IS NOT ALWAYS ABOUT WINNING

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First of all, I dedicate this post to @meesterboom whose story on @adsactly 's blog titled ADSactly Fun - Fire! motivated me to write this piece.

About a week ago, after reading that story, I decided to curate it because it was interesting and inspiring. At the end of the story were these questions:

What about you? Have you ever misinterpreted a situation and done your best to win even when you shouldn't? Worse yet, has it been in a life or death situation?!

As I pondered on them, I realised that for sure I have misinterpreted many situations in life and did my best to win even when it was not all about winning.
This happened mostly in my secondary school days. Then, everything was competition for me.

There is this day I will not forget in a hurry. We had a quiz and the class was divided into groups. To make everyone prepare for the quiz, the teacher said that marks will be scored individually. So, as members of the same group we were competing against other groups and against ourselves too. The ambition of being first made us hoard relevant information and books from each other.
On the day of the quiz, after competing at the group level, three groups (scoring above 5 points) moved on to the final round. Luckily, my group qualified for the finals.
At the finals, the teacher decided to play with our individual desires to be the best in class. Each group member was to ask a difficult question to the other members of his group. Every question one asked and his team member could not answer attracted an individual point as well as every correct answer to a team members question.

Competition is the mother of rivalry.

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The battle line was drawn, we were all out to prove our intelligence. We asked ourselves very difficult questions such that none of us could give a correct answer to the others question and we even argued to prove each other's question wrong.
The teacher was having a good time.
At the end of the round, the teacher scored the groups based on number of questions answered within groups, he also refused to decide the best in the class. Our over ambitious nature rewarded us with zero points (+4 for asking 4 unanswered questions and -4 for failing all the 4 questions asked by our teammates). The other groups had some points after the calculation.

They won us because they made it a WIN-WIN and not WINNER TAKES ALL situation.

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We went home that day to lick our wounds from the defeat. We had learnt our lesson - it was not all about being the best but learning to work as a team. It was supposed to be a win-win situation.

And even if it was all about winning, do the actions we take during the competition not matter at all?

Sometimes the competition gets so hot that we forget to act as humans. I have seen people quarreling bitterly in the fight to be winners. Friendships have been broken, lives have been destroyed (especially during political tussles), people have been accused falsely, so many bad things have happened while striving to win.

Winning is something that should be considered rather than blindly striven for. @meesterboom

Do not get OBSESSED in your desire to win.

In as much as we all want to be winners, we should not forget to be kind and human during the competition. The desire to win should not block you from hearing the sincere cry for help from a fellow competitor and should not stop you from helping out too. DO NOT GET TOO SELF-CENTERED!

WINNING IS NOT BAD, I NEVER SAID THAT
The desire to win is in everyone. Winning provides an inexplicable feeling. No one wants to be a loser and no one should. However, life is not ALWAYS about winning. There are times in life we have to sacrifice for others, let go winning so that we can lend a helping hand to someone in need or consider the good of everyone before our selfish desire to win.

Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed it.

You are free to share similar experiences here. Your story can motivate or inspire someone.