A path that comes back around

There is a park in Abu Dhabi with a loop path around it, and on a cool evening it fills with families walking off their dinner.

Most people move at a pace that suits talking. Then someone in running gear comes through, quick and purposeful, and a small wave of unease travels along the path behind him. Steps lengthen. A couple who were chatting go quiet and speed up, without quite deciding to.

Nobody is racing. There is no finish and no prize. The path bends round and returns to the gate it began at. The runner is not reaching anywhere the walkers will not reach. He is only leaving each stretch of it sooner.

So the couple who hurried have not caught up with anything. They have simply finished their evening early. The conversation they came out for got cut in half, and the park they came to enjoy went past at a trot.

We are pushed, almost from childhood, to treat everything as a contest with one winner. Exam results, rankings, the neighbour's new car, the friend whose small business seems to be growing faster than ours. Even when nobody has started a clock, we hear one ticking.

But most of what we do with our lives is not a dash to somewhere. It is time spent in a place, with people, doing work that loops back on itself. Speeding up to match someone else does not move us further along. It only gets us out of the good part faster.

On a loop, the person who passes you has not won anything. Chase him, and neither have you.