competition is found. Nowadays we see students slaving away to be the best in the class, to feel
noticed. In a job, we see people sabotaging one another's work, competing to get the position.
With companies, we see them fighting each other over who can make the most money.
Competition is everywhere, and it is not beneficial to us. It affects how one lives and perceives
life. Competition can make someone's life dull and stressful. With competition, our actual goals
get lost and the only goal we are left with is to be better than the next person. I believe that
competition makes humans lose the value to living. Making people miserable of their lives. …show more content…
This means that one must be in the correct
mindset and work towards defeating the suffering.
Dehdari 3
The epic of Gilgamesh is a story about a man named Gilgamesh. When Gilgamesh’s best
friend, Enkidu, dies he goes to search for immortality in fear of his own death. Through his
journey he meets Siduri, the cup bearer. In Gilgamesh’s case his competition was beating
mortality. On his quest to mortality he begun taking less care of himself, so much that when he
encountered the cup bearer she noticed. Siduri said to Gilgamesh that the immortality he seeks
cannot be found (Leonard, 13). She counsels him and advises him to be happy, eat, put on clean
clothes, shower, and to hold his child's hand and hug his wife in joy (Leonard, 14). Siduri gives
Gilgamesh the simple task of just living and enjoying life by doing everyday activities in joy.
She advises him to put down his competition of beating death, and come to the realities of the
joy of simple everyday life. This shows that when competition is involved you stop taking care
of yourself, and thus stress is created until they get what they want. In Gilgamesh’s case, he
would not have been happy until he found immortality. With competition students are …show more content…
When Tu Hsia asked Confucius
about filial piety, he said: “‘Nowadays a filial son is just a man who keeps his parents in food.
But even dogs or horses are given food. If there is no feeling of reverence, wherein lies the
difference?’’’ (Analects, 159). In this quote Confucius is saying that anyone can give someone
something, like food in this case, but if there is no respect for the person there is no point in
giving them anything. I believe this is the first step in overcoming competition. Confucius used
Filial Piety because it was his way in explaining how youngers should respect their elders. By
taking this filial piety and changing it into respecting everyone we can get rid of competition. In
respecting, everyone, you can then respect what the person is doing and not have the will to
compete or do better than them. We can also take Filial Piety and put it towards yourself: to
respect yourself. When you respect yourself, you will not be tempted to compete with others.
Thus, letting you live your life, like Siduri advised Gilgamesh to do.
Ending competition results in living your life to the fullest, being stress free, and