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Race The Clock, Not Your Neighbor

Each heroes’ journey is unique. Own yours, not theirs

Shefali O'Hara
4 min readApr 16, 2023
Photo by Miguel A Amutio on Unsplash

There was an old Doris Day song my father and mother loved. It was called Que Sera Sera and it started off like this:

“When I was just a little girl
I asked my mother, what will I be?
Will I be pretty? Will I be rich?
Here’s what she said to me”

The song is something we can all relate to because all of us have been children. We wondered about our future, or our parents asked us what we wanted to be. Would we became nurses or astronauts? Doctors, mechanics, or gardeners? Would we have a family of our own one day, find true love, or travel?

And always there seemed to be a subtext — how would our lives compare to those of our peers? Like the children of Lake Wobegon, we were all assumed to be “above average”, whatever that meant.

It is the last bit that I think is the problem.

First of all, because it pushes children into competing, sometimes when they are way too young to be doing that.

Second, because none of us start in the same place, the concept of racing against each other on a defined course is a fallacy.

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Shefali O'Hara
Shefali O'Hara

Written by Shefali O'Hara

Cancer survivor, Christian, writer, engineer. BSEE from MIT, MSEE, and MA in history. Love nature, animals, books, art, and interesting discussions.

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