Another joy of mine as a kid was playing sports -baseball, basketball and football. While I hated to lose, individually or on a team, the important thing for me was to be outside playing. I never kept tally of my win/loss record over the years, but in those competitions I learned how to have fun, to cooperate, make friends, develop physical skills, be a team member, and also how to deal with frustration and embarrassment.

We care too much about winning or losing in our culture today. Winning is only one element of competition, which is complex in nature. It’s origins are from the Latin. “com” meaning with, and “peto, petere” meaning to seek, or strive; in sum, “to strive with.” Thus, etymologically, competition is not meant to signify an alienating process, but rather one where we are striving together, with others. Also, while competition is not, strictly speaking, an instinct, aggression is. When aggression gets out of control, particularly for men, it can create feelings of shame, humiliation, and anger. Shared endeavors, whether playing checkers, basketball or the stock market, are no longer fun. Things can turn ugly.

Men don’t need enemies in order to bond and maintain satisfying friendships. I’m not suggesting that there aren’t real dangers in our world that require our vigilance and attention. Finding common enemies in order to bond us together, however, can be a distraction – and a dangerous one, at that – from the critical challenge of figuring out how we can better control our tempers, check our egos at the door, be open and vulnerable with each other, and find common ground when we encounter differences in our ways of thinking. These are critical skills for establishing and maintaining close friendships.

When the men in our men’s groups, our Friendship Labs, first meet, there is the inevitable carping about how “guys out there in the world are full of themselves, don’t care about being real, aren’t interested in being close with other men.” Recently, however, one man interrupted this harangue, and, smiling, said to the other guys, “Dudes, we’re talking about ourselves, aren’t we?” He continued, “Maybe, as Pogo said, ‘We’ve found the enemy, and it is us.'” I enjoyed his comment. We guys might do well to give “those guys out there” a break and start tending to our own gardens.