3.27

    Ever since last years candidates became black belts, I have become one of the highest ranking belts in my class, meaning that I stand in that front corner that only the best get to stand in. That comes with expectations, expectations that I feel like I can't live up to at some times. Sometimes I feel like I don't belong in that spot, that I belong a few spots away from it. Most of the time that I feel like this, it is because I am comparing me to other people. The people who have stood in that spot before, and the people who haven't had the chance to stand there yet, I compare myself to them. When I do that, I only look at what they're better than me at, and I completely ignore everything else. In Kung Fu, this kind of thinking is discouraged, you're told to only compare you to your past self. In school, it's almost always the opposite, they want you to compare how you're doing to how everyone else is doing, and it creates competition. Sometimes it can be good competition, the kind that leads to study groups and friends being made, but it can also easily lead to bad competition, the kind that splits people up and creates hatred. That's how I see it at least, others will probably see it differently, and some might see it the same way I do. But either way, I'm trying to compare myself to others less, and compare myself to my past self more. After all, a spot in class is just a spot, and I doesn't matter who else stands there, all that matters is that you are better than who you were the day before.