Slow & Steady Wins The Race

Slow and Steady Wins the Race:

In order to make my food taste better, I would entice my parents to tell me a story with every meal that I ate. If it was a particularly disgusting meal, for example: raw egg-warmed up, the story better be EXTRA good. Come on, you have to admit that a story is the best secret ingredient there is to be had.

It was one morning during a bowl of cereal before school; my dad was up to bat to tell the story. It was an unlikely story of a tortoise and a hair (told in Malayalam-because I was a fob, and didn’t much English- AND YES I WAS BORN IN THE USA), there were a few adaptations that had to be made, like the race started at my house and ended at my aunt’s house which may have been a few miles away. I listened intently as the tortoise (also known as an “AMA” in my language), persevered against all odds to beat the rabbit, which was naturally fast. I thought my dad invented this story for a long time. Can you believe my surprise, when in the second grade there was a TV adaption to my dad’s story?

I thought about this story as I was thinking about the weird turns my life has taken. If you know me, you know that I am always trying to speed through everything, I usually don’t slow down (except when it comes to chores, i.e.: cleaning my room). I sped through undergrad, and was trying to find a way to speed through grad school as well. Look how that turned out (insert face which emoticons don’t have). As I have had several months to marinate over my current life status, I realized I am the rabbit.

Yes, I realize that the rabbit is not the winner in the story and that he/she can be described as foolish. Without even knowing it I became a rabbit in my ambitions to achieve everything in a timely fashion. I wanted to rush through the hard parts and relax when I was far enough ahead. Unfortunately, life does not work like that. You can’t win if you aren’t constantly working, even if at a slower pace. The turtle had several odds against it’s victory, yet it strived to complete the journey at the only pace it knew how.

More importantly, we spend too much time focusing on pace, especially in our culture. There is an unwritten timeline as to when things should be accomplished and at what point you should be at a certain age in your life. The real goal is to complete everything and not how fast it took you to complete it.

Take a step back and re-evaluate your approach to life, are you meeting deadlines and completing checklist without really even thinking about what you are doing? These days I find myself taking deep breaths and reminding myself “slow and steady wins the race.” It doesn’t matter the pace I go as long as I make it to the finish line.