The Rat Race (The Solution) Poem by Raphael Sackey

The never-ending race raged on,
and we soon learned that
a lone runner tires faster than a company.
For it was barely impossible to realize tiredness,
while immersed in a conversation with friends.

And so birds of a feather flocked as one
and men made friends, wives and relations.
So did I make and break ties under the scorching sun.
For maintaining fidelity to one company, never came easy to me.
So I skipped from one group to another.

The first group I met were the body-builders.
And their motto was: "no pain, no gain."
They run for hours amid songs and chanting like soldiers of WW2
believing that all roads must have an end
and only those in the front lines could possibly know what this race was about.

Getting to the frontlines was self-actualization.
A chance to know what started it all.
They taught me which muscles to build and how to step.
But I knew that it was folly to run with their logic.
For they would not remain youth forever.

Then I met the wily businessmen.
And O, their logic was so opposite and antipodal to my previous friends.
They were fat and had no intention of running.
But they had fat brains as well.
And did not hesitate to use them.

They would spend their days gathering wealth and supplies.
As if running was a bother, they would set up trading centres
and sell water, food, medical supplies, and the like to the runners.
And O how rich they got.
THEN, they would pay body builders to carry them on their backs.

They treated men like horses or slaves
while they ate on their backs.
And when their carriers were tired,
they dangled bottles of hope-filled water above their heads.
And I knew immediately that I was not one of them.

Almost always, the businessmen had robbers on their tail.
These… and only these men, I did not join.
They murdered their way through families. O, what a dangerous life.
They took what they could and gave nothing back.
All so they could live on the backs of other men, like the impressive businessmen.

Almost solely because of them, another group cropped up: the public officers.
Included among them were the law enforcers and the red-cross healers.
The enforcers tracked down these crimes
while the healers struggled to repair the damage the robbers left in wake of their plunder.
So without these service providers, the world was a dark place.

Public officers had no need for the pointless marathon.
They either found fulfilment in taking a leaf from the Good Samaritan's book,
or had learned to love to hate the robbers for their atrocities.
Perhaps I envied them. Blessed were they to remain blind to the marathon and its goal.
But at least, their peaceful aim was one worth dying for.

As much as their aim earned them respect,
the officers were not the ones with the most following.
Pretty soon, I came across the religious and the perceptive philosophers.
Those brilliant men who stood their ground
while the world run around them.

These teachers gathered crowds of massively immense proportions
and taught them a myriad of things.
Like Christ onto his disciples they told their followers to win souls
and I even met some who went round stealing babies and kids from the runners.
And when they amassed enough, they could start a movement to oppose the race craze.

Some taught that the race was useless
and that there was a life after death that was more meaningful.
Some philosophers kept their listeners from running by telling them that
the world was round, and that all runners would eventually come back to the start.
And others taught their students to run a direction across the original flow.

But then I met one who had managed to get his crowd
running opposite to the flow promising to guide them to the beginning of the race
and his stupidity finally made me stop.
I had run for decades and even I did not start from the beginning.
This guy was completely nuts.

But he finally made me realize that
it didn't matter which direction I run.
The aim of living was not where we were going at all
but what we were
or better still what we are.

I had run for so long that I barely even knew myself.
Was I a musician, an artist, a researcher, what in God's name was I good at?
Yes, I knew nothing other than I was alive.
I stopped and built a circular barricade of spikes through which no runners would trespass.
And in there I sought to discover myself.

Pretty soon, others joined me and asked what I was up to.
And when they heard and asked themselves who they were,
they had no choice than to sit and search with me.
And as my friends grew, the wider the circle became.
Yes, I had finally found the purpose of being alive.

Soon, there were buildings in the circle.
And in each lived a man of a different trade.
Carpenters, fashion designers, scientists, you name it.
This was civilization and we called it Zion.
For it was on a hill that tired runners would often not climb.

Finally, I had a place I could live and die.
But then the day came, when one businessman stepped into my safe haven.
And I knew that our little civilization was no longer safe.
He would start his own little corporate rat race in Zion.
Much like the one in my previous world: the one they called earth.
So I put a sign upon my grave, to warn my friends of his ways.