Many books have been written on the rat race, and those who run it. I don’t know about you, but I resent being called a rat, even if I am a willing participant in the race. You see, I am an average guy with a wife, a couple kids and a dog. I have mouths to feed. I have not inherited a dime from family. My parents are broke and could not afford to give me money if they wanted to. That does not mean I don’t get fed up with the race, but I don’t like being called a rat.
Every morning I wake up to the sound of a screeching alarm clock, make the dreaded walk from my bed to my shower, get dressed, grab a protein bar and drive to the office to slave away in an office for nine hours making a profit for the company. Every two weeks I get a paycheck, and even less frequently, a pat on the back. It is not my passion, nor my calling, but with the aforementioned mouths to feed I go about it with as much pride as I can. What about that makes me a rat?
Dictionary.com defines the term rat race as:
Any exhausting, unremitting, and usually competitive activity or routine, esp. a pressured urban working life spent trying to get ahead with little time left for leisure, contemplation, etc.
Sounds about right.
I know there are those out there who made better choices than we did, financially. There are those who sold a business, or inherited a large sum of money from their parents or grandparents, or saved prodigiously from the time they were 17, rode the market up and cashed out with $700k in equities by the time they were 30. To them I say, congratulations. But don’t look down on those still out there hustling to earn a buck and put food on their table.
So around here you will not find the term “rat race,” well, unless I am ranting about someone else using it. Just because some of us still have to work for a living does not mean we are less intelligent, or value our freedom any less than those who have managed to escape.
Photo by CSatch
