Is Competition meant for Excellence or Strive?

When competition leads to excellence, it is a good thing. Ont the other hand, when competition leads to striving, it is something else. This is why we have two kinds of competitions - healthy and unhealthy.

In the movie, Akeelah and the Bee, there was this Chinese boy whose father wanted him to win the Bee at all cost. The boy's father subjected him to constant reading with practically, a zero life for anything else. He soon took to hatred for Akeelah and every other person in the contest until he discovered that there was much more he was losing by choosing to compete for strife with others.

Life itself is really not a competition. You can say all you want and liken it to a contest. That's fine but then it should be lived as one where you only compete with yourself. The only thing you should strife with is a chance to be better than your yesterday. All through scriptures, there were different cases where people took to competing with one another. The first record place was in the book of Genesis where Cain compared his sacrifice to Abel's. The truth is that Cain's sacrifice would have been accepted if he had fought against delivering items of lesser standard. If he won the contest against himself and brought forth the best of his yield just like his brother, his sacrifice would had been accepted.

Another example is seen in the lives of Jacob and Esau. From their mother's womb, the hand of God was mighty upon Jacob and the strive for one to be blessed than the other was not going to matter. Esau could have maintained his excellence and do well in his own space