Sometimes I’m horrified at the way we seem, as a society to expect to win all of the time. I feel that there is no place in anyone’s heart for playing for the pleasure of playing and watching just to enjoy something. There is a sort of gloom that descends on me each time I realise that we go further and further into this wasteland of competitiveness that transcends all those things that we should just be enjoying because of doing them.
I’ve had a couple of experiences today that have really wound me up but I’ll come back to them in a moment because I just want to illustrate my point with an example from my own little sister who I adore totally yet we are so different in many ways. Jan is extremely competitive by her own volition and I have never been competitive really. Jan told me when her two sons were tiny (well, they still are tiny but they used to be tinier) that she wouldn’t accept them supporting any footie team other than Moan Utd or ARSEnal because she wanted them not to have to look defeat in the face. It was so important to her that they didn’t experience even the failure of a footie team. Interestingly enough, her oldest boy, now five and a bit, has defied his mummy and declares himself a QPR supporter, like his daddy. QPR are a struggling team with little or no money and they were relegated down to Division Two some years ago. Despite their financially precarious position they have clawed their way back to the First Division but are languishing down at the bottom of the table (well they were last time I looked). Good for him, I say, that says more about loyalty and love than about the need to win. I hope Jan doesn’t mind me making these observations – she’s the most wonderful mother to the boys and is not at all like the sharks I've been dealing with today......
Today, I have experienced pure greed from an agency that we have come into contact with. We are having a party on Wednesday night that is a celebration of advertising. One of the agencies who submitted an ad to be judged for an award category hadn’t bought a ticket for the event so we called them to see why not. The executive of the agency said that unless she’d won an award then she wasn’t prepared to come and support the event. I was so angry at her attitude I didn’t tell her that in fact she has won an award and I hope she feels suitably silly when she finds out the following day that she’d not been there to bask in her glory.
Another client contacted me and said they were having a problem with timings for the evening and made it quite clear that he too would only come along if he could be sure of going away with something.
Whatever happened to wanting to support your peers in their endeavours? We are putting on a party that is so exciting that I can’t see how anyone could fail to have a good time, the price of the tickets barely covers the cost of food and drink, we are subbing the event heavily from our own budget because it is something we believe in passionately yet all I see around me is a cancer of ‘I must be seen to be better than everyone else’.
All I can say is, that I’m glad to hold values that are about quality of life rather than just being ahead of the game all of the time. I wonder how those who spend all their time trying so hard to win ever sleep at night.
