Rat Race

“No rat can win a rat race, Only the snake with ceaseless hunger.”

At a certain age, a major injustice is done to each individual, It is tradition for a person of the first world to make a decision when they come of age and maturity. This decision is “what you are going to do for the rest of your life?” Meaning how are you going to provide for yourself, and subsequently what job are you going to take on to do so?

As our world runs on money, young adults need to make money for themselves, in order to be independent. Making enough money to be independent is no small task. We pose a question, how do I make money? Trading our time for money is one of the only answers. If we just trade a little more time for a little more money and so on we get closer to “enough” which never comes. Let me remind you that money and what requires it is not limited but the time we have to earn it is limited.

For many, this doesn't stop and before they know it they have traded away their life. We age and the demand for money never diminishes. The decision of how to begin to make money becomes even more prevalent among college youth as they choose the degree they wish to pursue. This is an injustice because it's a rushed choice, defining students to a box before many of them really get to know who they are. Not knowing who they are, they cannot decide what degree to pursue. Moreso not knowing who you are; means that you cannot have a love for the person that you have yet to become. Choosing either a degree or a profession locks you in with the promise of money. The more time spent with a certain area means that you will earn more, providing the structure for even more complex elements to the trade of time for money.

The age in which this tradition of picking a profession takes place is in the late teens and early 20s of people's lives. Might I remind you of the journey that each one of us went through in our teenage years? We grow private and insecure, often struggling to understand ourselves and how to share ourselves with the world. Often feeling like we are not enough, that others are better than us, and that we are somehow alone in these feelings. This is a journey that varies among people yet there are similarities among each teenager’s struggle. A phenomenon that none of us manage to avoid. It can take time to tackle these obstacles. For many, the struggles of self-image last well into their 20s when they are expected to make this astronomical life-altering decision. The decision I will remind you of is "What am I going to do for the REST of my life?" What a terrible time for us to make such a decision, we make the decision of what we are going to be before we are done processing the decision of who we are.

I believe that this injustice fuels a workforce, with a focus on bigger, more, and newer. The foundation of consumerism. This gets young adults trading their time for money before they even grasp what they are doing to themselves. A population that is driven to buy, with targeting ads bombarding them, and cultural and social structures that validate them based upon their net worth. The workforce when viewed as a whole entity produces what it pays its workers. For instance, someone that works at a restaurant uses the money they earn to buy the food that they make for others to eat. Of course, the system is much larger and more complex with workers of all kinds producing everything imaginable and then using what they make to buy the things that other workers make.

The consumer gets the products that they want and the workers get the money that they want to then become a consumer themselves. Everyone is satisfied with this stagnant loop. Those that are paying for it are those giving up their time. Nature pays too, exploited for the materials to fuel consumerism.

I have a challenge for you to put this all into a personal perspective:

Look around yourself, stop whatever you are doing, and take some deep breaths because those never hurt. Just admire the stuff you surround yourself with. I hate that I must ask but are ANY of your surroundings pure in the eyes of Nature? Mankind is operating like a machine, with an intake of Mother Nature and an output of man-made products. When thought of as a living entity we eat nature and we shit out man-made shit. Alarmingly we give our precious time for money which we give in order to get the shit of Mankind. Disgusted? I sure am.

When viewing the before and after of mankind we have turned this heavenly Earth which we now understand to be unfathomably rare into an unlivable hell. We are now getting the initial taste of our destruction as nature begins to punch back with the weather. We take more than we give back leaving this place bare! We build cities to fit more producers and more workers. What are our country's goals? To grow the economy. which is done by feeding more nature into the machine of mankind and producing more shit. Mankind is a cancer that only knows how to grow and destroy. Or is it?

We are as nasty as rats feeding off of the beauty of this world. We have been fed lies about what is meaningful in this life. Our unwavering focus is on the most versatile shit that we make… money. Money is each stride that we make in the Rat Race. There is no end to this race other than the projected destruction that will ensue in its wake.

Want to make a change? Want to get out of this race? Want to stop eating shit?

I offer the true purpose of our existence, We are a unique species that is conscious of ourselves and that which is all around us. We can live in any environment on Earth. We are smarter than any other species. It is with all of these gifts that we are meant to nurture the life of this world, to allow it to flourish, in every corner of the world. We are meant to be gardeners, maintaining and supporting the life that grows in each unique place. We are meant to admire the beauty of nature and be grateful for the blessings of life on Earth.

“Our own dreams have expiration dates, the fear starts to kick in after a certain age, it complicates, imagine what we could create not participants of the freaking rat race.”

-Jack and the Weatherman

Read More: The Great Gardeners