I Hope I Lose This Rat Race

I’ve been thinking:

I hope I lose this rat race.

Not in a self-deprecating way. Not because I’ve given up.

But because I finally see it for what it is.

A maze.

A loop.

A system of running faster to stay in the same place—just for a slightly bigger cube of cheese.

We were told there’s a prize at the end.

Success. Respect. Comfort.

But somewhere along the way, the prize morphed into the process itself: the hustle, the grind, the climb.

And that’s the trick.

The race isn’t toward anything.

The race is the trap.

The Maze Is Man-Made

We didn’t create this race in some evil boardroom.

We evolved into it. Slowly. Rationally. Desperately.

More productivity. More buying. More marketing. More dopamine.

It wasn’t one rat’s fault—but all of us sniffing toward security.

But now the walls are made of billboards and performance reviews.

We consume more than we need.

We earn more than we use.

We market dreams to each other so we don’t question the dreams themselves.

It’s strange.

We call it survival.

But few of us are actually surviving.

We’re mostly consuming ourselves.

Stopping Is Not Failure

Somewhere in me, a voice whispers:

Drop out.

Not from life, but from this version of it.

Pause long enough to ask:

Whose race is this?

What am I running toward?

What do I actually want?

And while I’m still in the race—still moving through the maze—I’ve paused long enough to realize something:

I don’t need the race.

I’m not attached to it anymore.

And for me, those are the first steps toward losing it altogether.

I’ve stopped running blindly.

I’ve started watching.

Questioning.

I’ve come to believe that exiting the race doesn’t mean you’re lazy.

It means you’re awake.

A Reflection

This is not a command.

There is no single rat race. Each maze is custom-built.

Some of us are sprinting for status.

Some for safety.

Some for parental approval.

Some for that moment of Instagrammable peace.

But what if there is no winning?

What if leaving the race is how we win?

What if losing the race is the healthiest thing you can do?

This thot is not an answer.

It’s a pause.

I hope I lose this rat race.

And maybe—just maybe—

you do too.