People of the 21st century are akin to pet hamsters furiously running round and round on a wheel.

All our lives, we run with no real end in sight. Society, in the form of family and friends and neighbors, push us onto the never-tiring wheel before we take our first step and then we grind. We desperately want to jump off, or even slow down, but there's that annoying fear of falling. Even when we realize our journey may not have a satisfactory ending, we keep running. Few people manage to escape the wheel, but it might be impossible to truly remain off it. The world today retains its structure and sanity because there are people who run to keep the wheel moving tirelessly. When you think the only way to succeed or even to survive is to run on the wheel like everyone else, would you still want to jump off?

This is the idealistic journey of life in stages: birth, school, university, job, marriage, childbirth, retirement, and finally, death. This is our wheel. We keep running on it — from birth to death — until either we break or the wheel breaks. Everyone who runs on the wheel must reach each stage around the same time. If not, one is assumed to be left behind. If we don’t go to college right after high school, we’re losing a precious year. God forbid it takes even longer. What would people say?

Does it really matter though? In the grand scheme of things, does it matter if we go to college at twenty-one instead of eighteen? Are we really losing time if we don’t get a good job by twenty-five? The wheel says yes. Society says yes. The whole world says yes. Do you think the same?

We hear about multiple famous personalities who have achieved great things at 45, 60, even 70 years. We read about them in newspapers, magazines, and social media posts, feel wonder in great amounts and jealousy in invisible portions, and think about what it would be like to be them. We believe, however, that we can never be them. One does not have to do great things though. If famous people around the world can achieve great things at 45, 60, and 70, why can we not do supposedly less-than-great things like going to college and getting married at 35, 55, and 80?

This is not a permission slip to sit idle and do nothing. This is simply a call to slow down. This mad rush to nowhere may be fruitful in short bursts of time but in the long run, it does more harm than good. Live life at your own pace. Of course, there may be times when you cannot afford to because the world just doesn’t work that way. When those times pass, remember that you can slow down and you don’t have to run on the wheel forever. Wouldn’t a life lived on your own terms be better than a life dictated by society anyway?

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