The human rat race

We begin the race the moment we come into this world bawling our eyes out. In fact we're already tired from winning our first race by beating a million sperms. From day one in this unforgiving world we are nurtured by doting parents, tutored, cajoled, coached to compete, to run the race, and to win. Yep, the goal is always to win, to be the first and best in whatever you do throughout your life regardless of whether you like it or not. We are under constant pressure to excel academically from Ist grade all the way through graduate studies. Every one us gets forced into a rat race throughout our entire lives fighting tooth and nail for one uppance. Be it friends, family or relatives, we jostle, tustle and fight in a mad scramble to edge ahead. It's a shame that we are always running for the next milestone, never stopping to catch our breaths, never stopping to savor the little joys of life, and a shame that we have such tunnel vision with only our next goal visible and everything else being mere happenstance.

Few people, myself included, realize that life is about experiences, life is about the journey and not the destination. It's about waking up to see the sun rise in all its glory, a cup of coffee in hand and taking a few moments to let nature speak to you through the birds, through the whispers of the morning breeze. Instead, almost every one of us wake up with our minds buzzing with what has to be completed that day, the troubles of yesterday and the worries of tomorrow. We are more concerned with where our peers are in the grand race to riches, more worried about society's eye on our "so called" progress in race called life, and more worried about doing things that are socially acceptable than doing stuff that our hearts tell us. We often do not have time for our loved ones, the time to make a random person smile, the heart to lend a helping hand to a distressed soul, or the thought to listen to a friend's troubles. In most cases people are running a race they don't even like. They go through life struggling to make a living and not living a life of their own making. So many of them will stay in the wrong jobs all our life, putting money, social status and savings before things close to their hearts. 

If we just lift our heads up, put our ultra-busy lives on pause for a moment and take a look around, take a look back at our own lives, what we've accomplished so far, what we've really wanted to do with our lives, then I suspect a majority of us would rethink the way we would want to live the rest of our lives. Then, maybe, we would make an effort to come out of our shells and live life the way we want to - doing things we like, the way we like and whenever we like. We need to stop running the race and realize that life is not a race. And then, maybe,  we can start living life and not run for our lives.