The Rat Race

In August 1945, the US did something that would change history forever: they dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In response, Japan surrendered, and what was possibly the deadliest war in history came to an end.

There was just one problem: thousands of Japanese soldiers were still scattered across the Pacific isles, hiding in the jungles with no way of knowing that the war was over. Some of these soldiers went for 10 years without knowing that the war was over, shooting at random people who took walks in the jungle. One of these soldiers, Hiroo Anoda, was still fighting the war 30 years later. Why? For the simple reason that no one told him to stop.

Just like Hiroo, we as human beings are fighting a war that doesn’t exist. And that war is the rat race. We are always chasing things, like money, status, and possessions. But these things are illusions. Like a desert mirage, they promise happiness from a distance. But when we actually achieve them, we just move on to the next thing. The hole inside of us never actually gets filled. So, like hamsters stuck in a wheel, we keep going but we never get anywhere. We keep achieving new things, but we never find the satisfaction we crave.

Think about it this way. We often think about life as a journey. But there’s a problem with this analogy. Journeys have destinations, but life has no destination. You never arrive at the finish line. You just keep running until you die.

If you could look at the racetrack of life from above, you would see that it’s not a racetrack at all. It’s a dancefloor. Some people are scrambling around trying to get better dancing shoes, or to move to a better part of the floor, or to impress the people next to them. And some people are just dancing.

My advice? Don’t worry about the rat race. Just dance.