Is life a race?

This post may be considered to be a rejoinder to my earlier post "Is life governed by chance?" [I may even give a trilogy of posts - my first!]. I like the way good art rebuts the theory that life is a rat race. But is that the full truth?

Let's not fool ourselves into believing that things will happen at their own pace. We have to put in our effort [I've said about this in that post]. But it doesn't mean that we should be doing what everybody else is doing blindly [I've talked about this in an earlier post again]. All of us are manifest in different forms; there is no need for us to undo that diversity.

Let me share an interesting thing that happened to me this afternoon. I was returning to my hostel room. There is a gap in the surrounding fencing that provides a short-cut to the main gate. The ground around the fence is muddy; the footprints can be plainly seen. As I proceeded to enter via that gap, I saw that the 'path' that I was traversing was the only path marked with footprints, even though there were atleast 4 different ways to approach that gap. Another victim of herd mentality. And herd mentality is the starting line of the rat race.

Before we get to do things, we must critically examine as to why we are doing things, if at all those things should be done. Moreover, we must understand that things must be done at their own pace. This itself is such a vast topic; it will make a new blog site by itself.

Is life a race? Yes, but it is certainly not a sprint race where instant gratification is the keyword [the phrase is not being used negatively; I just want to mean that in sprints we must give our maximum in the first few seconds]. It is more like the long distance races where you need to give a sustained output for long periods of time; this output can be less. If you have ever seen long-distance races, the athletes who win are usually trailing way behind in the middle of the race.

So, life is indeed a race. But we have the choice of whether to run it or not. Those who are left behind can always catch up, because this race never ends. There are no losers in this race, nor are there any winners; and we gain the beautiful insight that there is more in the race of life than simply catching up with others.