on competition

[...] I don't really get any pleasure out of beating other people. I agree that it's right and proper to do the best you can in a race, but this desire to beat everyone else is another matter altogether. So on competitive occasions like school sports days, the pleasure I get just by being there takes over, and I'll end up running the race with all the urgency of someone skipping his way across a meadow.
Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: one boy's voice from the silence of autism, Q44 p118 (Sceptre 2014), translated by David Mitchell & Keiko Yoshida
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