Race of Life

There is one point that we all can agree with. The world is a race. Every single person is running his/her own race. The difference is in how we perceive the race. For some it is a sprint, where your target is the person in front of you. A relative race; where you judge your performance by a scale graded with the names of every single person around you. The second category is running an Endurance race where they push themselves irrespective of where they are in the larger race. Each day they set a higher target and victory is gained irrespective of who was competing along with them. A majority of the world is toned to fall under the former category, where they are made to believe that their success is not in doing their best, but doing better than the best.

Is it easier to set a target independent of you or to compete with yourself? A motivated sprinter would definitely make it good due to the abundant sources of targets available. But what exactly is the level of satisfaction here. With the whole concept of “the grass is greener on the other side”, wouldn’t it just be an endless series of seemingly sadistic victory dances only to realize there is one more “better” to best. The endurance racers on the other hand achieve an easier satisfaction with just being able to reach their set target. Well, the major fault here is that since the target is set by youself, your “laziness/motivation” plays an important role. Happiness, to the grade of ecstasy, could be achieved by just being able to wake up early or pass an exam. But then there is also the factor that a motivated Endurance racer always knows the target. The factor of ambiguity which can be found for a Sprinter does not exist. Here’s where I pull out an analogy which I assure you is NOT taken from personal experience. It’s a typical case of a fat guy running a marathon as compared to a seasoned runner. The former is just happy to be able to run an extra mile each year while the runner has set himself a higher target. On a quick look, it may seem like the runner is at a higher “success level” but let’s consider a few factors. The miles covered by the first guy do not change over the years; his competition is constant – himself. Now add in a new runner into the marathon, one who’s been working hard to beat our seasoned runner and you got yourself a whole chase going on, where each year, one of the two is definitely going to be dissatisfied with his performance.

While our super go lucky hero is content with himself, being able to stay on his feet after quarter the way!.

You can imagine a dumb content smile here considering the plump guy is always the dumb one on TV..What’s the deal with that anyway???

So here’s the question, which one is right? Then again there is always the fact that right and wrong is a purely relative concept. So which one would YOU say is right? Compete with the world? Or Compete with yourself??

Live YOUR life.. :)

Shanker