Chasing the Cheese

I'd like to think we all had our priorities straight once. I'm pretty sure it wasn't chasing after the greenback, yet like all rats that are newly joining the race the whiff of cheese is in the air and before we know it we're off, in frantic pursuit of a goal which stands to gain us little and may help us lose everything.

For people of religion, we have shown that we are truly the ones who have been blinded. Even as I write this out I wear my blindfold proudly. I understand the necessity of all that the paper marked as the bill of trade provides but then again I did say I was blinded didn't I. We're being brought up day-by-day to be more practical individuals, to understand the importance of money, to be thankful to our parents for providing it and helping us in accessing futures that will enable us to earn it.

Money is a source of life; it pays for bread, water and the roof over your head. It doesn't make any sense does it, why would we be told not to hoard this precious commodity. Over time as our goals change we won't do it for need any longer. Because money is also the mark of success and after all a little healthy competition never hurt anyone...or did it?

You know, if everyone was brought up with a carebear mentality (say it with me, 'I care!!!') then eventually some exploitive harami, with a troubled upbringing and abusive childhood, would come along and ruin our utopia for us. We have to learn to embrace the game because we are NOT living in an ideal world, it is forced upon us and therefore we willingly become its slave. Look at us all, isn't that the sorriest looking bunch of victims you've ever seen. To quote an old mentor: We're all 'simply pathetic'.

How much ambition is too much ambition? How little is too less? At what point does quitting from the rat race not label us a with a big L (either meaning) on our foreheads? In this society, which preaches that winning silver actually meant that you lost gold, who truly decides the winner? Ironically, a race which has no finish-line can only be won by a determination of who got the farthest before he/she croaked. You're welcome to your gold.

I have found and lost what I live for more than enough times in my very short life. At times, it's been because plausibly the goal seemed to far but the key has always been that distance is a relative issue and if I thought it too far for myself, then it well and truly was. Anything that you want more than your life is worth running after; running till your lungs burn, your legs ache, your muscles twitch and your heart bleeds. No matter which goal you find, you'll find that pitter-patter of small feet and the smell of cheese will always accompany it but nobody says you have to run the race.

Fables aside, The tortoise and the hare both got to their destination. What if the finish line had been a little sooner for the hare? I bet that though would have traumatized us as children (especially the 'big-boned' ones) but as adults we can learn a useful lesson from it. Being all that we can be is immensely important and something that we have had ingrained in our heads since youth. But what is more important, is when to learn to stop being all that we can be and becoming all that we wanted to become.

Following the golden brick road
I reached a branch in its wake
I thought about taking the one less travelled
For all the difference it would make

I thought about cutting my own path
I dreamed of sprouting wings and taking flight
I considered just sitting still, breathing slow
I even considered treading back, the way I came

I waited, others waited not
They hurried along with nay a tarrying thought
All off to see the wizard, that none had prior seen
Then I saw the glances, thrown back at me

So I pitched me a camp, I knew I had arrived
For my heaven lies beyond the starry skies