A few weeks ago, I was chatting to one of the mums at my son’s sporting club. She asked how often my son was training, and I answered without thinking much about it.

Later, I noticed her son had started attending more training sessions.

I remember feeling a bit surprised. And if I’m honest, slightly irritated — although I couldn’t quite name why at the time.

The more I sat with it, the more I realised what it was. It felt competitive. And that made me think about how often competition sits quietly underneath things in life. In workplaces. In parenting circles. In social spaces. Even in recreational activities that are meant to be just that — recreational.

There can be an unspoken comparison running alongside everything.

And I wondered what it might feel like if that wasn’t there.

If we could separate other people’s choices and achievements from our own sense of direction.

If we could simply be supporters of each other, rather than measuring ourselves against each other without meaning to.

Because most of the time, we are not actually in direct competition with one another. Even when it feels like we are.

And even when we miss out on something we wanted, life rarely closes down to a single path.

There are usually other directions, other opportunities, other versions of things still to come.

And maybe we don’t need to be competing at all.