Are you living to your own standards?

With the proliferation of media and technology, hardly nothing is not covered and visible through means of the media. In a snap of fingers, one could search for the latest news and happenings. Artificial Intelligence, the technology buzzword, that brings about speed, precision, efficiency through automation, this is no longer a foreign to most. However, if one does not even recognise these 2 alphabets "AI", one could be already out of the market or race (No offense, please).

Yes, the rat race. Every rat racing and competing for the finishing line.

Recently, I had dinner with some friends. Someone asked an interesting question, "Do you know what is the most popular chat or social media application now?" Instinctively, many different names such as Facebook, WeChat, TikTok and Snapchat popped up. Apparently, according to this friend of mine, Instagram is the most popular social media (Don't quote me as I did not verify this but this friend works for a prominent technology MNC). However, if some of you could recall, ICQ chat that started in 1996 was one of the earlier popular chat channel (No, no, I am not that ancient. I googled through technology means). In less than 15 years or so, there are so many media platforms emerging. Seemingly, there is no finishing line.

One may like to consider if one wants to be the rat in the rat race without a finishing line. Each rat has different size, speed and food support, etc. If no one's circumstances is the same, the competition is not a fair one to begin with. But who says life is fair?

Living in fear of being left behind, somehow, some of us struggle with ourselves because we compare with others under unequal set of conditions like different family backgrounds, financial means, education levels and again, the list can go on. It can be alluring to jump into the bandwagon rather than be a sticking sore thumb. Join and continue in the rat race if that is what you prefer.

Otherwise, living by your own standards could be an alternative. It does not mean one is not motivated to continuously improve or compete for success. Quite some time ago, I bumped on to a friend whom I had not met for many years. I recalled he took a few more years to complete his studies compared to his peers, having to retake some examinations and came from a very humble family background. Supposedly, he was 'destined' to be left behind in the rat race if he was in it. He managed to complete vocational education and after working in different jobs, he finally went into sales and did fairly well. If you are expecting to hear that this person became the CEO of a company, no, it did not happen. This is not a typical news shout-out from the newspaper about how people had managed to rise from rags to riches.

However, what I have observed of this friend is that he had made the best of his own circumstances, living to his own standards. Of course, one may opine that it is not enough for some since one's motivation could be highly spurred through external competition and perhaps, this person has not reached his success yet. And as most have heard before, it is always good to have some competition to bring out the best of you. How true is this or if it is applicable to you, it is really up to one to decide on that though.

If you ever take a train or bus in the morning and if you are not too busy with your own handphone, you may notice that many people look tired or rather listless, hardly is anyone looking visibly in a pleasant mood, or perhaps you could not see much with most of their heads down fiddling with their handphones, it does make one wonder, if anyone of them is living to their own standards or that of others, competing in a rat race.