Relax: Life Is Not A Race

It’s a journey, enjoy it.

I know, your gurus have told you that life is some kind of race and you’ve a competition, you need to win but, like it or not, I’m here to bust this bubble.

I don’t like doing this but I have to; your gurus’ view of life as some kind of competition or a race is skewed. Life is neither a race nor a competition. Rather, life’s a journey. And, believe it or not, everyone’s journey is unique and no one is running a race or competing against his fellow humans.

Yes, time is the most precious of all entities. No denying that. However, this mantra that you need to make use of every bit of it is against the characteristic nature of humans. I mean, if you keep running and you’re not allowed to take essential pauses to catch your breath, you can’t let yourself to relax. As a result, you may end up losing your ability to function properly and to co-exist with other humans in a normal and efficient manner.

Let me explain!

Everyone of us has dreams and to fulfill these dreams, we have to work hard. Neither I’m against working hard nor I deny the value of persistence. In fact, I’m of the view the two of the most significant ingredients for a happy and a successful life are hard work and persistence.

Nonetheless, in our pursuit of dreams, we start considering life as some kind of race, in which we are not allowed to relax or to take a break. And that’s where distress and frustration start crawling into our lives, eating us away with every passing second.

From the womb of the mother to the grave, we spend most part of our lives, longing for things and trying pretty hard to get them. That’s natural and I have no problem with it. However, to fulfill our never-ending list of desires and dreams, we often end up losing what we should actually care about; our beloved ones, our passion and sometimes, our souls. Consequently, a sense of meaninglessness is all we are left with.

Moreover, one cannot deny the relative nature of life as we usually weigh our success and happiness against others’, causing us to feel sad about ourselves.

Just like most of you, when I think about all of my batch-mates, doing their ‘dream’ jobs while I’m sitting on my couch, either watching Netflix or penning down my thoughts, it really makes me feel upset and sad. And that’s exactly why this mantra that life’s race is misleading and distressing, to say the least.

I don’t want to confuse you with some psychological and philosophical theories so, for the sake of simplicity, let’s say every phenomenon has three phases: perception, interpretation and meaning.

Now what we have done is, we have already perceived our lives as some kind of competition and based on this perception, we have concluded that we are fighting against our fellow humans. As a result, our wrong perception of life has led us to finding wrong meaning out of our existence; life’s a race, which is needed to be won at all costs.

Furthermore, we like dwelling on our past and spend too much time, thinking about our future. We either feel sad about our past failures or we feel good about our chances in the future.

Unfortunately, all these gurus have somehow figured out how to manipulate this facet of human mind and then to mold it through their false promises. They have given us a hustle mantra, assuring us that our failures of the past were mainly because we didn’t take life a race or a competition and now, if we start running vehemently, without stopping even for a second, we will certainly end up finding success.

As I said earlier, I have no problem with working hard and showing consistency. Not at all. Nevertheless, to equate this ‘hustle’ with hard-work and persistence is mainly based on our skewed biases. Because from what I have learnt, this hustle mantra has not helped us, instead it has made us act like a pendulum, moving to and fro, without any true purpose or motive.

One might argue that success and happiness, both are great motives. Well, they certainly are. But how about, what exactly is success or happiness? It’s quite subjective, everyone has his own definition of success and same goes for happiness.

Another issue with this perception of life is, it will never make us feel contented or happy.

We chase things and once we get them, we want more. It’s a cycle. A never-ending cycle. In between chasing and getting, we end up forgetting what really matters.

And this cycle continues till the motion of the ‘pendulum’ damps due to the tiresome and arduous tasks, humans try to complete.

I understand the relative nature of life. But we have to grasp the idea that what we have is most suitable for us; our journey is unique and we don’t need what others have. Also, to think of life as a race or a competition is nothing but a delusion. This perception will never benefit us, rather it will drag us to more failure and frustration. So, wake up! Save yourself from falling prey to this mantra and stop believing it as the ultimate truth.