1 post tagged “competition”

Lately, people around me have been getting older.  Of course, I'm not ageless, but they're older than me, so I can phrase it like that.  They're further along in their life development, anyway.  They're getting married, having babies, buying property, etc.  It makes you start thinking about long-term types of goals and aspirations. 
There is not a defined "finish line" of success, but the "finish line" of death.  The smaller "finish lines" of success (okay, I'm sick of those quotes by now, too) before death are largely arbitrary and subjective.  They're more like lap times, though the lap distances can vary.  Maybe this is a bad metaphor, but I've past beyond the point of no return. 
Let's move past that metaphor itself though; we're done with that.  Since we like things packaged in threes, I've broken down this game of life finish lines into three basic and interrelated elements (using alliteration, as well, of course!): Pedigree, Percentile, and Promotion.
Pedigree are the natural traits you are born with and certain socio-economic factors you are born into.  Percentile is how you move yourself up in your world and what you do to improve yourself and your situation.  Promotion is your sphere of influence and just how large your "pond" is.  Pretty basic and self-explanatory, right? 
Even with a good Pedigree, you can't raise your Percentile without Promotion and you can't increase Promotion without raising your Percentile, though Pedigree contains in itself a certain amount of Promotion.  You can have a high Percentile even if you have low Pedigree, but only if your Promotion level small.  I admit, this part gets a little dicey, but I think you can follow the relationships here.
This is the game that we are born into; you can't choose to play or not. If you don't feel like playing, that's just the decision to keep a low Promotion level.  If you choose to "compete", then you work on your Percentile within your Promotion.  Then, when you hit certain plateaus in Promotion, it knocks your Percentile back down because of this new tier that you've entered.
Admittedly, this idea is obviously not totally flushed out - it was more of a passing idea that came to mind.  It can definitely be refined, but the main thing is I wanted to come up with a concept of three elements using alliteration.  Whether I believe in the concepts I put forth here is irrelevant; I just want to bring them up.