Life Is Not a Race
Lessons I'd Tell My 10 Year Old Self
"A Hare was making fun of the Tortoise one day for being so slow.
"Do you ever get anywhere?" he asked with a mocking laugh.
"Yes," replied the tortoise, "and I get there sooner than you think. I'll run you a race and prove it."
The Hare was much amused at the idea of running a race with the Tortoise, but for the fun of the thing he agreed. So the Fox, who had consented to act as a judged, marked the distance and started the runners off.
The Hare was soon far out of sight, and to make the Tortoise feel very deeply how ridiculous it was for him to try to race with a Hare, he lay down beside the course to take a nap until the Tortoise should catch up.
The Tortoise meanwhile kept going slowly but steadily, and, after a time, passed the place where the Hare was sleeping. But the Hare slept on very peacefully; and when at last he did wake up, the Tortoise was near the goal. The Hare now ran his swiftest, but he could not overtake the Tortoise in time.
The race is not always to the swift."
"What?"
10 year old me arches his eyebrow.
"Well ... Obviously if the Hare is stupid, he loses to a tortoise."
I liked the fable, but at BEST it just seemed like a cute little story.
"I mean ... it would be NICE if the tortoise could win. I like that idea."
Little did I know.
This fable is used all the time, in my experience, to showcase the idea that "slow and steady wins the race."
Or some lesson about not being cocky and boastful.
10 year old me thought it was a stupid lesson, because the only reason the Hare lost is he was dumb.
But I see it differently now.
It's not ABOUT the Tortoise and The Hare. Because our lives are not simplistic little races between forest critters.
Though amusingly, if you pit a hare vs a tortoise and try to get them to go to an end point, The Hare can easily get distracted and run off or just sit and stare, never reaching it's destination.
Funny.
The fable is intended to teach us a deeper lesson about living life, but perhaps unless you "get it", the fable comes off as ... trite?
I mean, who's gonna believe, no matter what the story says, that it isn't better to be the fastest in a footrace?
The better question is, do you really think you're in a footrace?
I see my kids subjected to this perspective over and over.
A great deal of the influence around their life drives them to think they need to strive to be the best, to be the winner, to be the most correct.
The way they play amongst each other, always vying for "the best position."
And it all paints the same picture ...
That they are growing up with the perspective they are in a footrace amongst everyone else and they must win.
But life is not a race.
Life is not a singular game that you can win.
In fact, it's quite a different kind of game, and the way to play it WELL is different than a footrace.
We could look at Aesop's fable and say the Tortoise recognizes his life is not a footrace, and actually when he challenges the Hare saying "I'll get there sooner than you think," he's already there and already "won." So in the "race" he just plods along, while the Hare is the one obsessed with winning.
What's taken me most of my life to realize is that the only reason the Tortoise appears to "win" the race is because he doesn't lose.
The Hare gets distracted, cocky, arrogant, etc.
Conceptually we're talking about Finite and Infinite Games.
The concept is important to me, and I haven't found a better way to talk about such a cerebral theoretical concept.
In short, a race is a finite game. There's a defined end point, there is a winner, there are losers.
Life is an Infinite game. There's no defined endpoint. There's no score. There's no winner.
YOUR biological life does have an endpoint, and this is I think where people get tricked. They think "my life ends so I have to win it" ... and then they ironically race to that end.
Here's the thing.
The only way to play the Infinite game well is to not lose.
As long as you aren't dead, you're "winning" the infinite game of life. Every day you don't lose, you have the full day of possibility in front of you. The opportunity to do, to create, to move forward, to live.
There are arguably better ways to play the infinite game.
Know yourself.
Figure out your OWN infinite game, and play that, not anyone elses.
The Tortoise doesn't try to sprint to the finish line and beat the Hare, the Tortoise doesn't even care what the Hare is doing. He doesn't really care about racing. He's just playing his own game.
All the while the Hare is trying so hard to "beat" the Tortoise, to show that he's better than him, that he ends up losing.
It's really the perfect metaphor to describe the exact scenario of confusing your own life to be a finite game.
How do I teach this to my kids?
...
The other day, we were all walking the neighborhood as a family. My wife with our newest little one (3 months now), our 2 older boys, our daughter, and our two dogs.
We're sauntering along, while the kids ran ahead with the dogs.
The sun filtering through the clouds.
Our street is quiet (we're nestled in the woods along a peninsula). The air crisp with the nearby ocean.
Our 2nd oldest (he's 10), runs back to us and says ...
"Why are you guys SO SLOWWWW?"
I chuckled. "Well, I guess I find it enjoyable to not be in a rush."
At the same time, I remembered when I was his age having the exact same conversation with my own father.
I also thought of that tortoise and hare again, and life as an infinite game.
I joke about feeling like an old man now, because I love stopping in my day to smell the air, listen to the birds, feel the breeze. To savor the steps taken in a walk. To have 10 minutes on the deck with my coffee in the quiet of the morning. To relax in my chair and read a book.
I use to rush past all these things because I was so INTENT on "living life" ... but it was an attempt to race and live life the way it had all be defined FOR me, by other people.
It wasn't the way I was, or what I had, so I constantly had to chase after this vision from outside of my own self.
I didn't look inward to see what really mattered to me deep in my soul and my bones.
And now, I watch my new 3 month old boy, and I can see in his precious new soul, right now he gets it.
He wakes up in the morning, happy and burbly to see our faces.
We open the blinds behind our bed, and he slows down, stares in complete awe at the fresh daylight outside.
The grass, the bushes, the trees in the back yard.
The fluffy clouds lazily drifting through the blue sky. Very occasionally a deer wandering through the yard.
He'll happily enjoy himself just looking at the world for what is an immense amount of time relative to his life.
And THAT is winning the infinite game of life.
I know now that the way to teach my kids this is simply to exemplify the concepts in my own life. To be the best example I can.
(More on that in a future post)
I can't make them see that happiness in life is found NOT by racing against it or anyone else ...
But I can show them how I am happy.
And I can nurture the happiness they do find, when they slow down and see the bits in themselves which will lead them to their best infinite game.
Now in life I see ...
I am neither Tortoise nor Hare. I am racing no one and nothing.
Every day I relish the magic moments reflected now in the wonder of my little boy's eyes.
Nothing else really matters.