As part of my daily routine,I really love going for a jog early in the morning. This morning though was a bit funny, so I wanted to share this. As I left our apartment gate, I started jogging in my own pace which others may consider slow. There was another lady who left the gate together with me and she was super-fast as she jogged and left me with a huge distance between us. As I was jogging, there were three guys standing around, mere on-lookers really. One of them commented and said to me “run faster and catch up with her, come-on, she is better than you, run, run.”

I told myself, “You know what Bongs, just ignore him”. He and his friend’s then started walking behind me and the dude just couldn’t shut up. He screamed behind me saying “this jogging thing is tough neh”. Well, thankfully I was about to take a turn and that was my escape from him. I kept at my pace not resting anywhere but as soon as I turned to go downhill, guess who I found, the same lady that was running/jogging at a fast pace. There she was tired as ever and walking slowly and had her hands on her waist. I just raised my hand to salute her and kept jogging at the same pace. When I got home I really laughed at this incident and reflected on everything that just happened.

In many ways, our lives are like this, we could be living our lives the way we know is best as per the Master’s will. And then we receive commentary from mere on-lookers who begin to compare us with those around us. If we are not clear and careful about the purpose of our lives, we can easily fall into these traps and live at a pace foreign to us. Can you imagine what would have happened to me if I decided to speed and succumbed to the pressure of what that guy had said? Maybe I would have been so tired that I would not have finished the distance I had planned to jog. When we live life in a pace that’s not ours, more often than not, we will not accomplish the things we meant to do.