The youngling has the best taste in music and YouTube.
We are all a bunch of martial arts loving video gamers. Nothing competitive in our family. Nuh-uh. We were watching “Game Grumps.” I don’t remember what game they were playing, but I like how they described their competitiveness. In typical social media fashion, people conflated the video performance and a media piece for “real life” and was wondering if the two hosts had really argued and disliked each other.
I think what they threw down in a few concise sentences had the makings a good, long post about the Five of Wands….or video games….or kung fu….or sports…or anything that involves healthy competition. They are always “friends at five.” They may have a knock down drag out snarling swearing game of Sonic the Hedgehog, but once they sign off then it’s back to reality, regardless of what the comments say.
I’ve been in sparring matches with some of my favorite people on planet earth. It takes a degree of trust to have at it knowing that the right punches will be pulled and that anything that does happen is pure accident lacking in malicious intent.
Malevolence is the fine line between competition and outright violence. If you can push yourself for the sake of self-improvement, for the sake of the sport (or whatever it is you are doing), or for the sake of your team that’s healthy.
Winning at all costs for pure gain – be it gaining something material or gaining power – is the unhealthy, violent, malevolent part even if the competition in question is tiddly winks or pick up sticks. By the same token, high stakes games can be individually competitive and still wind up in a better place for the greater good everyone….think of Abraham Lincoln’s “Team of Rivals” as Doris Kerns Goodwin put it.
The Five of Wands is a reminder to find the good in competition. It is also a caution to avoid letting competition bring out the worst in us instead of distilling and elevating the best in us.
Sage Words Tarot 