The ‘Rat Race’ Dilemma

“The eyes of others are our prison… and their thoughts are our cages.”

The moment we stop thinking about what the world around us is doing, we can escape their grasp on us. Unfortunately, in today’s increasingly competitive society, with parents wanting to register their children in preschools even before they conceive and 100% of students wanting to get into schools with a 2% acceptance rate, we’ve lost direction.

There are so many different perspectives of the rat race that life has become. May it be a high school student who spends four years building themselves to be the perfect versions of themselves — in a rut of testing cycles, diverse extracurriculars, research — or settling down — in a rut of financials, paperwork, health issues — we just don’t catch a break.

Our environment has made us analogous to blinkers on a horse — it doesn’t allow us to focus on anything but the final destination. And if we fail, it’s taken as though it’s the end of the world. It is not. Everybody faces setbacks, and in those moments, we learn the most. Dwelling heavily on a loss causes mental strain and takes away from the time we have to recoup.

The biggest lie told by humans to humans is that their “routine will end soon.” It does not. We start off wanting the best kindergarten to get into the most prestigious school to help with our placement into a renowned university to get a well-paying job to sustain a family. The routine doesn’t end. Humans are wired to be ambitious, and if we stop after a point, we won’t be wholly satisfied. We’re always hungry for more, which is why, whenever life gives us victories, we should celebrate them while they last.

Who has set these metrics? Who says that students graduating from Ivy League universities are guaranteed success? What makes only 25–30 the ideal age range for marriage? We’ve been brought up in a society with pre-existing notions that blindside the spectrum of options we have. The more we listen to what we want in life and shut out the voices of exterior expectations and pressure, will we truly be able to look back at our lives at the age of 80 and smile.

Last year, in a Hindi class, I was made to write an essay weighing the pros and cons of a competitive environment. I pointed out that competition drives people to push themselves and that without competition, people would have no basis to challenge themselves. Now I realise that it shouldn’t be at the cost of losing sight of everything else. At the end of the day, awards or several billion dollars in the bank don’t define where one is in life. It’s the people you meet, the bonds you create, the good you do that will nudge you to keep going that extra mile.

In a nutshell, the lesson is that no matter what we do, people will have something to say about it. So, the best thing to do is embrace whatever comes our way and follow what we want to do from within.

Earlier, I said this generation is running a rat race. I stand corrected. We’re more living on a hamster’s wheel. Until we choose to step out from the conventional ways, we’re going to keep exerting energy where we are.

It’s up to us to step off the wheel.