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You have to run pretty fast in this life even just to stay still
Friday, 31 August 2007
The Red Queen is a character in the Lewis Caroll fantasy story "Through the Looking Glass". The main character in the story, Alice, comes across the Red Queen and finds her always running in the same spot.
"Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else — if you run very fast for a long time, as we've been doing."
"A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"
This is, in many ways, a good representation of a problem we all face. Generally, when people work, they want some kind of reward in return. But a large proportion of the work we do leads to no progress whatsoever. Indeed, we must struggle simply to maintain our current position.
Think of how quickly a beautifully maintained garden returns to weeds and jungle if no work is done on it. Or how soon a relationship is extinguished without the participants working to keep it alive.
Even in the area of investment, a large part of the effort is simply put into maintaining the value of what the investor already has. For a pile of money under the bed actually falls in value every year as inflation reduces its purchasing power. Even if it's put in the bank earning interest; taxation and inflation can reduce its worth more quickly than the interest increases it.
The more you realise this phenomenon, the more you see what a major part it plays in our existence. We all want a better life for ourselves, yet large chunks of our time are spent simply preventing ourselves from losing what we already have.
That's one explanation for why those who have the most, and presumably could be forgiven for having a rest, seem to end up working the hardest.
Like the Red Queen, we're all running as fast as we can simply to stay in the same spot. And we know that if we stopped running, we'd soon be going backwards.
And somewhere in there, we hope to find a little time and a few resources to actually improve our position in life. But it's not easy!
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