This weekend, my family beat me. Brutally.

We were playing cards, and I lost by 85 points.

Crushing loss. But I didn’t care.

My wife often marvels at (i.e., complains) that I have zero interest in being competitive when we play. Sometimes, I lose, and sometimes, I win. I always shrug.

Now, as a New Yorker with a long business career, I understand competition. I am capable of being ambitious, but I don't particularly enjoy it.

It can be absurd. And counter-productive.

I started practicing yoga in my mid-50s. I’d often find myself the only man in a room full of lithe, flexible young women. If there were men, they all had ribs, Mandela tattoos, and man-buns.

Nonetheless, a simian voice in my head would eagerly point out that everyone else in the room was pretzeled into impossible shapes, their heads resting on their lower backs, their legs splayed in perfect splits, their spines twisted like corkscrews, while I huffed and puffed to reach my toes. It seemed I would never be able to do yoga properly because I didn't have whatever Buddha-given gifts these lithe yogis had been born with. I’d try to myself a little further, and then, sproing!, I’d pull a muscle instead and hobble out of class, much worse than I went in.

In time, I learned that this was ridiculous.

I was not meant to be as flexible as a 17-year-old gymnast/ supermodel. Instead my goal became to be a little more stressed than I‘d been last week.

We live in a ludicrously competitive society. We are surrounded by endless contests and comparisons. Everything that can be quantified is used to drive us to excel further.

After we are all created equal, we are then instructed to arrange ourselves in hierarchies.

Line up by height. Race for a blue ribbon. Get better grades. Go to the best college. Buy a bigger house, a Porsche, a Rolex, a Gucci, or something else.

We pit ourselves against each other wherever we can. We get a job and immediately set to work striving for promotions, titles, bigger offices, and personal parking spaces.

We’re not supposed to ask our neighbor what he makes in salary, so we check out what he drives, his breed of dog, where he goes on vacation, and his kids go to school.

They are indicators of what he’s “worth”.

Strangely, the most intensely competitive arena is the creative world.

Artists compete on best-seller lists and Billboard charts. We vie for Oscars and Grammies, Tonys, Emmies, Pulitzers, National Book Awards, Peabodies, platinum records, grants, ribbons, likes, followers, subscribers, auction prices, red dots, reviews….

But all these metrics have nothing to do with making art.

Art is about you and nobody else. What’s inside you. How you see. What you feel and know and dream. It's not comparable to someone else’s dream. Not better or worse. It just is.

In fact, it's an opportunity to escape the dog-beat-dog world we live in. To leave the rat race and say, I want to explore myself, create something new, play, explore, and discover the beauty inside me and the world around me.

You can’t beat that.

Your pal,

Danny

P.S. If you'd like to make some art that's really all about you, sign up for my new course, Your Illustrated Life, and create a beautiful visual memoir. The early bird special ends on May 1, so grab it. You'll get a nice discount and an invitation to join our weekly live Studio Time sessions. Details here.