I remember an evening a few years back. My childhood friend and I were sitting at a restaurant. Our lives were engulfed in sadness and melancholy with similar reasons at that time. He was going through a break up and I was going through my career issues. Typical problems of the late teenage! And then he said to me holding his drink, “You know, what’s the worst thing that has happened to me in my life? It will sound strange, but its that I always secured a top rank without fail.” It really sounded strange at that time, as we both used to be the toppers of our respective classes, but I could not forget that evening and his thought ever.
I have officially entered middle age now and as I look back at my life, this thought keeps coming back to me. I don’t know when it started and when I became a compulsive topper of my class. It was a glorious thing. I enjoyed the fame. It became an addiction. My life evolved around just one thing, being the best! I never missed classes, never missed home-work, I studied everything in advance, never broke any rules. I was just unstoppable in my march towards excellence. School, junior college, graduation, post-graduation…it became a relentless and unstoppable march!
And as I was approaching my forties, I started feeling tired. I got engulfed in strange frustration. The race I was running was not making me happy. This compulsive pursuit of excellence had become, or may be was the same since the beginning, an armour which hid the real me. I had no fun memories of my childhood, I missed my childhood love, I had ignored my health; physical and mental, I had become a bit distant from my family. It all started to feel fake and unreal. I started hating my so-called achievements. Because I had lost the ‘real me’ somewhere for them!
And I thought that this was not the life I wanted. Suddenly I felt a strong desire to have peace. Since childhood we are tuned for success. We are tuned to keep working harder and harder to achieve better and better. No one teaches us to slow down. No one teaches us to enjoy the beautiful journey even if the destination gets delayed. So its difficult to slow down. Its difficult to settle for the less! Doing anything like this feels stupidly risky!
I kept thinking and experimenting. I wanted a way out. And decided to slow down and break this dogma. Over the time I moderated my work, in both, quantity and intensity. Each day I reserved time for myself and my family. I started doing things I liked in my free time. I actively paid attention to my health, became more fit, in body and in mind.
I am still unstoppable. But the race has changed. Now I run for myself. I take pauses to look around and enjoy the beauty of this life and resume my journey again. I don’t mind losing my top position and my compulsive pursuit of excellence for this happiness. I am still unstoppable…but I run at my own pace!
