The Rat Race
Can you feel that? It’s been around since preschool, but fortunately most of us did not
encounter it. Currently we are working longer hours every weekend, there’s no “me” time.
Everyone is racing to the ‘cheese’. Well welcome on board the Rat Race. On our right you’ll
see the bachelor’s pass, which determines a part of your success in the Rat Race. In
approximately 20 metres you’ll see people working for hours and hours on end to achieve
this measly reward of cheese
When we talk about the Rat Race, we paint an image of rats competing for a measly reward,
a small piece of cheese. Even though this reward is so insignificant they still compete for it.
We can liken this to the everyday routine of human adults. We work every day to achieve
this future, but what is the point of planning a future if you cannot enjoy it?
From our very birth, we are given a name that we didn’t choose, put in a school and told to
study subjects that we didn’t choose. We are told to raise our hand and get in a line,
because that is seen as order. Letters that we learnt in preschool determine our success
when we are adults.
We work 9-5-hour jobs every day, for five days a week, only living life on the weekends. We
let money dictate our choices and actions. We follow the same process every day. Most
people wake up early every day, depriving themselves of adequate sleep.
Most people take the Gautrain, but if you are a veteran in the Rat Race, you own a car. You
sit in traffic with other people who are competing in this Rat Race, just like you. You are
competing in this Rat Race so you can pay off a car that you bought so you can get to work
faster.
Once you pay off that car, you want to buy fancy clothes. With this greed comes more credit
that you’ll have to spend more time working to pay off. You are in a constant delusion that
buying these things will make you happier, but you’ll just have to work more, to pay your
debt, and become a machine, a machine that profits for someone else’s success.
The trouble is that most people don’t live, they just race, trying to achieve a goal that is so
infinitely far away, and when they wake up and realise, they are too old to enjoy the many
elegant bounties that life has to offer. Even if you win the rat race, you are still a furry
rodent with a long tail.
I hope by now you realise that the Rat race is not a situation you want to be in. As much as
the world promotes it, life is not a game. You have one chance at it, and when the games
over, the games over. There is no redo button or try again.
Life is about choices It is your choice to stay or to exit. How? Discipline yourself and cut
down your expenses. Try to increase your income by buying what you need, and not buying
to impress. Implement a life work balance because life, is the limiting factor, not work. Live
in the present, because if you can’t live in the present then the future is a hoax.
I would like to end off with a quote by Suzy Kassem, “I will not join the rat race because I'm not a rat.
And I will not blindly follow a specific faith because I'm not a bat. The only race I'll take part in is for
humans being humane. It's called the human race, and sadly it's got the least participants.”