Alone on Top of the Mountain

Hmmm, is modern life by definition a no-holds-barred race to the finish line?

I certainly hope not. Don't get me wrong. Competition is a good thing within reason. It drives us to improve and to strive to reach our potential. It prevents us from becoming complacent.

But, somewhere along the way, the spirit of competition morphed into the spirit of domination. Remember the old saying: It is not whether you win or lose. It is how you play the game. It seems to me it has been reconfigured to be: It is not whether you win or lose. It is how completely you dominate your opponent in the process.

The corporate world is the role model in this regard. It is no longer about simply being profitable. It is about being dominant – about squeezing out your competition altogether or cutting them out of the equation.

Consider the publishing business. The corporate giants Amazon and Apple are working to cut publishing companies out of the business. They are leveraging technology to encourage authors to bypass publishers and publish directly with them. The spin doctor terminology for this wave is "the democratization of publishing" – which is good to a degree but very open to exploitation.

Category-buster stores like Walmart are on the same mission. Keep expanding into more and more areas – clothing, housewares, hardware, groceries, and on and on – amassing buying power as you go along until single category companies can`t match your prices and fall by the wayside.

"Bigger is better" is the new reality. Big box stores are dominating the retail space. If you want to survive, you have to gobble up somebody else.

But it's not my intention to launch into a rant about the greed of corporate giants. They are just the leading edge of a wave that I perceive. It's the "stand alone on the top of the mountain" wave that we seem to be caught up in.

Each time I step out the door, I have a gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach. The minute my feet hit the street, whether I like it or not, I'm in a race. If I don't get my elbows out and jostle for position, I'll be left behind and have to settle for the scraps. Or, even worse, I'll be trampled and kicked to the curb.

Every day the pace of the race gets a little quicker. Every day the rules of the race get a little more down and dirty. Every day the stakes become higher.

The argument can certainly be made that this is just the "survival of the fittest" principle at work. By this principle, some must fall by the wayside for others to survive and thrive.

It may be naïve. But I refuse to let go of the belief that this is not the way it has to be. There is a choice to be made. I can buy into the prevailing culture, put my head down and barge selfishly ahead. Or I can slow down, smell the flowers and hold out my hand to help my neighbour who is having trouble keeping up.

I can choose to reject the "alone on the top of the mountain" metaphor in favour of the "peace and good will in the valley below" metaphor. The top of the mountain is often a cold, windy and lonely place. The warm breezes and gentle meadows of the valley are much more to my liking.

~ Michael Robert Dyet is the author of "Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel" – double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael's website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com or the novel online companion at www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog. Visit www.smashwords.com to download a free preview of the e-book version.

~ Follow Michael's Metaphors of Life Journal aka Things That Make Me Go Hmmm regularly at this site. Categories: Shifting Winds, Sudden Light, Deep Dive, Songs of Nature, Random Acts of Metaphor. Originating at www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog2 .

~ Or subscribe to my Twitter site (mdyetmetaphor) to receive tweets when blog postings go up. Send comments or questions to michael@mdyetmetaphor.com .