Is Your Opponent Friend or Enemy?

Athletic competition is an interesting device. It pits two or more parties against each other in a Winner-Take-All contest encompassing physical, mental, and emotional abilities.

The stakes are often high. In the professional ranks, careers and livelihoods are sometimes on the line. Some think of sport as war.

However, sometimes we forget, sport is not war. Defeat does not result in death or imprisonment. Typically losing results only in disappointment and frustration. The worst that can happen in highly competitive professional settings is job loss. Unlike in war, after a lost contest life goes on. 

Sadly, treating our athletic competitors as demonized adversaries is far too common today. And it may be an approach which does more to limit rather than expand our own abilities. 

What is the best way to vie your opponent in sport  — as a friend or enemy?

W. Timothy Gallwey offer this answer in his book The Inner Game of Tennis:

Our opponent is a friend, to the extent that he does his best to make things difficult for us. Only by playing the role of our enemy does he become our true friend. Only by competing with us does he in fact cooperate. It is the duty of our opponent to create the greatest possible difficulty for us — just as it is our to try to create obstacles for him. Only by doing this do we give each other the opprtunity to find out to what height each can rise. 

Competition is identical with true cooperation.

Each player tries his hardest to defeat the other, but it isn’t the other person we aim to defeat; it is simply a matter of overcoming the obstacles he presents. In true competition no person is defeated. Regardless of who wins that particular day, you thank your opponent for the fight he put in, and you mean it. All competitors benefit by their effort to overcome obstacles presented by their opponent. You and your opponent grow stronger by participating in the development of the other.

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Thx for reading. | jm