Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Everybody wants to win
Everybody secretly wants to win.
We had to do some practical session regarding cardiovascular endurance yesterday. I merrily volunteered to be the subject of my group, thinking that it would be fun to be fussed over by my groupmates while they take my blood pressure and heart rate in various positions.
The bombshell dropped 1 hour into the lab session. All subjects are to proceed to the 3rd floor, and RUN up as FAST AS THEY CAN to the 6th floor, where the rest of the groupmates will take assorted readings again.
To the typical reader who is oblivious to the structure of my school building, the floors are spaced quite wide apart, and runing from 3rd to 6th is like going up 6 floors. To a typically unfit 21 year-old female (females have a higher percentage of fat) whose most strenuous activity is retrieving 1.5 cm thick journals from a shelf 40 cm above her head, that's like, running up 9 floors.
Anyway, 5 of twittered down to the 3rd floor, feeling a weird sense of anticipatory response to the unexpected mission. Run up three floors. Yeah. No big deal. Let's just stroll up.
Signals exchanged. Are you guys ready? Ok, we are ready.
One of the subjects ( the solitary, and sometimes, misunderstood guy in my class) motioned to the stairs with moderate flourish. You may run up the stairs now.
I should have expected the scenario that followed. Was it in the way our stances underwent a sudden, yet almost imperceptible dynamic change? Or was it the way cheers suddenly erupted from the 6th floor? Or was it the way I felt the rush of adrenalin, so fast that I could feel the beat of my heart?
Anyway what happened was a blur. All I remembered were loud smatterings of footsteps, laughter from one of the subjects (the male subject, who reached the final destination after me only because I blocked his way, hahaha) and me thinking, what in the hell?!
But I ran all the same.
You see, my dear friends, everybody wants to win. We all want to be better than our peers.
If you deny this, I understand. You are trying to fulfil a particular ideal. It's ok to lie.
You say you are happy just to pass a test. Will you still be happy if you passed marginally and the rest of your peers get, say, 85%?
You say looks don't matter, but won't you feel some kind of 暗爽 (secretly pleased, almost like mockery) if your boyfirend is better-looking than those of your girlfriends?
You may still be telling white lies to yourself, but keep in mind:
Everybody else wants to win.
(Anyway, my lecturer anlaysed all the subjects' cardiovascular parameters. He implied that my results indicate either 1) I'm very fit or 2) I'm on drugs or 3) I have some cardiac condition. Go figure.)
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Xiu Juan out
@ |9:59 PM|
