“Life is not a race but a pace we need to maintain with reality.”
~Amit Abraham
Almost all of my adult life I’ve competed in the extreme sport of white-water kayaking. My life revolved around adrenaline and competition.
Recently, I had a dream I will never forget: I was running in a race and I was out in front, winning. I got to a point in the course where there were no signposts showing the next turn. So I asked the race officials, “Where is the course?” They replied, “We don’t know.”
The race officials couldn’t tell me where the course went from there because there was no course. All of a sudden I stopped running and thought to myself, “There is no race if the officials don’t even know the course.”
The feelings that followed were first confusion and then a deep sense of relief.
I thought, “I don’t have to try so hard. I don’t have to win anything. There is no competition. Just stop. You are enough exactly as you are.”
And then I woke up.
This dream has stuck with me for weeks, as it feels like the exact message I need.
Just stop. You are enough. There is no race.
What if you already had everything you were asking for? What if this was it, and everything you thought you wanted was just an illusion?
Continue reading here: Life Is Not a Race: Why We’ll Never Find Happiness in the Future – Tiny Buddha
It is true that we spend much of our lives racing to the next goal post, all of which we have arbitrarily set. When we reach a goal we immediately begin establishing a new goal. I suppose that is okay so long as we understand that while achieving goals may be satisfying, they don’t bring happiness. As stated, happiness is a state of mind that focuses within.