No hurry, take it easy

Greatwolfman gets on his knees to meditate...

Breathe in

"I'm going to take things easy from now on, I'm no longer going to chase things that are out of my control" - I say to myself each time I wake up only to end up repeating the act, I don't think mediations work for me, it's pointless and a waste of time, I resolve.

I might be wrong so let's just take a look at two different schools of thought then you can be the judge to decide which of them you find to be true.

A big thank you goes out to my 
"sponsors"

The fastest person wins the race

[Image Source]

This school of thought is built upon the fact that life is a race and we have to keep running if we ever hope to succeed.

This feels like a hassle to me if I have to keep running, aren't there breaks after every lap in a race, who makes these rules?

I was raised with this school of thought, a second position prize was often regarded as a loss in my house which meant we always had to push ourselves to work harder contrary to the way we survived pre-school where we were often rewarded as all winners.

I became so competitive that I kept on pushing myself to do things that weren't even necessary at the time which in one way or the other affected my social construct (by the way, it didn't help my chances at making new friends). A part of being so competitive means you are also going to be a sore loser.

High competitiveness and sore losing are like 5 & 6, you can't have one without the other. I got so aggressive when I lost, my anger issues became something else until one day something happened but that's an article for another day.

Why does life feel like a race where the faster people are referred to as winners while the slow ones feel like losers. It feels so unfair. I wish I was raised differently but looking back at it now, I think it all depends on the environment you find yourself in.

Before you make any decision, let's take a look at the other school of thought.

Slow and steady wins the race

[Image Source]

This school of thought is built on the fact that even though life is a race, there is no need to be the fastest one to win. The slow and steady even have a higher probability of winning the race.

"The best things in life often happen when our eyes are closed" - anonymous

This would explain why we close our eyes when we kiss (at least 90% of people in love). The point of this analogy is that we often run so fast that we fail to appreciate the beauties of life.

When I was in high school, there was this girl. I often observed from afar (in a less creepy kind of way), she was my classmate but we weren't close friends (at the time). She always had this "I don't care expression" even when we were late on submissions on different papers.

The funny thing is somehow she always got by and I don't mean just "getting by", I'm talking about the distinction. She redefined what I thought about racing. Just as you've guessed, we eventually became friends. The saying that goes thus - "surround yourself with people that challenge how you think" runs farther than we allow ourselves to think.

Conclusion

Even though we all have a race to run, we are not in a competition with anyone, we all have our races to run and different tracks, some smooth, some rough, and sometimes crooked but it's ours. It's also important to take breaks from time to time to appreciate what you've got because only then will you realize just how lucky you are.

At what point do we say we are too slow or too fast? What are your thoughts on this?

Lately, I feel like I've been on a race and I need to take a break, but how do I know when it's too much or not enough. Every time I try to get some rest the thoughts of the work I have to do just come to my mind and just like that, I'm awake again and working.

I'll end this article with my famous quote from "Peaky Blinders" by the famous Thomas Shelby

"There is no rest for me in this world, perhaps in the next"

[Lead Image Source: Unsplash]