I've been reading Plato's
Republic, so maybe I've just got this on my mind a little more than I should.
As I lay awake in bed this morning, contemplating whether I should remain in bed and get my full seven hours of sleep by kicking in for another hour, or should I get up and go to the gym and do my workout and just get it over with, I had a thought.
I heard the traffic of the city outside, and I felt like I was in a competition to be more productive than the early morning drivers out there. That woke me up. Why? I don't know, adrenaline or something. The fight or flight reflex. Something. Point is, I was definitely awake and not motivated to go back to sleep.
I am a man who believes that paradoxes, or duality of being, forms most of reality for us. We ignore it at our own peril (even though many do, sometimes me). So I wondered who I would be competing with by getting up so early. Truly I would only be competing with either my self (the version of me that would just sleep in), or a transferred persona of someone "out there" that would be my nemesis, and again, that persona would really be my own creation, thus, by extension, me as well.
And Then Plato Got In My Head. What if competition within was just, where competition without was unjust? That is, if in any event, that my need to win at the cost of someone else -- a real person -- losing, is always unjust, while my effort to win against myself -- to exceed my best effort yet -- is always just. The measurement of who performed best is neither just nor unjust, it's one of those things that doesn't really matter. We make up stories about how it matters, but the stories are based on our need to compete.
I think there's something here worth exploring, but I have to go workout now so that I can compete better.
