BORN TIRED, STILL RUNNING

On the irony of life’s rat race

“I came into this world yawning, and life hasn’t let me nap since.”

— Michael Kubi, somewhere between Monday and burnout

I don’t know about you, but I was born tired. Not metaphorically, I mean it literally. Ask my mother. I arrived into this world late, yawning, and unimpressed. The nurse said I blinked twice and then fell asleep. That should’ve been my first clue: life was going to be exhausting.

And yet, from the moment you can walk, people start telling you to run.

• “Be first.”
• “Do more.”
• “Don’t waste time.”
• “Time is money.”
• “Wake up early.”
• “Chase your dreams.”
• “Don’t be left behind.”

Left behind where, exactly? And by whom? Nobody ever really says. All we know is that everyone else is running and we don’t want to be the one sitting down. Consequently, we run too.

We run through school.

We run through work.

We run through traffic.

We run through relationships we should have walked away from.

We run on caffeine, on pressure, on fear of failure.

We run even when we don’t know the destination.

And we call it ambition. But sometimes, it feels more like survival disguised as progress. Like we’re not running toward anything, we’re just running from the shame of not seeming like we’re “doing well.”

The truth is, most of us are not lazy. We’re just exhausted from performing. Performing competence. Performing happiness. Performing like we’ve got it all together, even when we’re frantically Googling “how to be okay” at 2:00 a.m.

What’s even more ironic is that for all this running, we rarely feel like we’re moving. You graduate and realize adulting is a trap. You get the job and find out it’s nothing like what you studied. You tick boxes and still feel empty. Then someone asks, “So what’s next?” as if your entire existence is a group project you’re behind on.

There comes a moment usually in the hush after a long day when we quietly ask ourselves: Am I truly living, or just running through life on autopilot? The question settles deep, almost accusingly, beneath the surface of our busyness. Most people would never admit it out loud, but if you listen closely, the world is full of whispered confessions: I’m exhausted. I barely remember what I did last week. I feel like I’m always behind. This isn’t just an individual lament; it’s the bitter, collective reality of the rat race.

Are We Living, or Are We Just Running?

It’s a strange irony the more we achieve, the more fatigued we feel. “Born tired, still running,” as one friend joked over coffee, “because even childhood naps weren’t enough preparation for adult life.” We glorify being on the move, congratulating the people who barely sleep, who say things like “I’ll rest when I’m dead”, quietly hoping that maybe the grind will reward us with a kind of permanent arrival. Yet, the arrival never comes. There is always some new summit, some urgent demand, another invisible finish line.

Sometimes, listening to the office “gossip,” you’ll hear it: the man who received another promotion but privately googles “early retirement,” the woman who won the award but lost herself, the friend who traded their Sundays for status yet can’t remember the last time they laughed for no reason. “Everyone wants to get ahead,” someone once quipped at a family gathering, “but nobody seems to know where ‘ahead’ actually is.” The bitter truth? Most of us are running on empty, chasing a version of success that mutates as soon as we get close.

Is All the Running Worth It?

There’s a heavy cost no one wants to count out loud, the missed birthdays, strained marriages, forgotten pleasures. Time, that most finite and non-refundable resource, slips away. Comedian Lily Tomlin once said, “The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.” There are no medals given for burnout, no standing ovations for collapsing quietly at the finish line. The hushed rumours trading hands at high school reunions and office happy hours are rarely triumphs, they’re tales of regrets, “I wish I’d slowed down,” “I wish I hadn’t missed so much.”

Can We Slow Down Without Feeling Like We’ve Failed?

Slowing down, in a world obsessed with motion, feels almost criminal. People associate rest with laziness, peace with lack of ambition. Our value is too easily pegged to productivity and speed. But at what point does the refusal to pause become self-neglect? Psychologist Brené Brown writes, “Exhaustion as a status symbol should be a red flag.” Yet we keep sprinting, afraid that stopping means we’re somehow not enough, that life will pass us by if we dare to sit still.

A grandmother’s advice at a wedding once stuck: “You’ll run out of years before you run out of things to chase, make sure you have some memories you actually enjoyed making.” Yet in the corridors of ambition, laughter often echoes faintly, as if joy demands permission we rarely grant.

Can We Redefine Success to Include Rest, Peace, and Joy?

This is the secret we struggle to say: rest and joy are not indulgences; they are necessary ingredients in a whole life. The longing for peace is not a flaw but a signal to recalibrate. True success, bitterly and beautifully, must be big enough to welcome moments of wonder, laughter, and stillness. It’s time to write new definitions, where “making it” no longer means merely surviving the grind but thriving outside of it.

Perhaps it’s time we whisper less about exhaustion and speak boldly instead of balance. Not everyone will understand when you choose to walk instead of sprint or laugh instead of hustle. But, as the old saying goes, “At the end of your days, your heart won’t care how fast you ran, it’ll only remember who you loved and whether you ever paused to dance.”

The irony is, when we finally slow down, life starts to catch up with us and maybe, for the first time, we truly begin to live. At some point, you stop and wonder, am I living, or just running through life on autopilot?

And maybe that’s the real question this write up is asking.

• Is all the running worth it?
• Can we slow down without feeling like we’ve failed?
• Can we redefine success in a way that includes rest, peace, and joy not just speed?

Because maybe life isn’t a race. Maybe it’s a long, strange walk with occasional dance breaks. Maybe it’s okay to move at your own pace even if that pace involves naps.

So, here’s a quiet truth:

• You are allowed to pause.
• You are allowed to rest.
• You are allowed to just be without apologizing for it.

There are people whose devotion doesn’t need many words, you see it in how they live, listen, and remember. My brother and friend, Omega, is one of those rare souls. If you know Omega, you know how much he treasures his mother. He talks about her more than he talks about anything else. He appreciates her toil, her sacrifices, and her love not just with casual remarks, but with a sincerity that pours from his eyes. You feel it; you see it; it fills the room.

But then, just as the horizon brightened for him at the very peak of his life, when dreams were finally falling in place, life wrote a different story. His mother, the foundation and heartbeat of his world, was gone. How do you make sense of that? What do you say, when the person you longed to share your triumphs with is suddenly not there to see them?

People will say, “God loves her most.” We nod, because sometimes, there just aren’t better words. The ache remains. That is life: beautifully, painfully unpredictable. The deepest love often walks hand in hand with the sharpest loss. Omega’s loyalty and gratitude to his mother are a testament to a bond that neither time, nor death, can erase.

This is the paradox of living: to give your heart fully, even when you know that nothing not even the greatest love can shield you from loss. Yet, it’s that same love that gives meaning to every memory, every accomplishment, and every story Omega will one day share. In the end, to have loved like that is to know both life’s deepest joy and its hardest lesson. And still, despite everything, to be grateful for it all.

You may have been born tired. But you’re still here. And that, in itself, is a kind of strength worth honouring.