Hey, am I still in this race?

There's an old bridge near where I live, crossing a part of Great Bay. Unused by traffic now for several years, it serves as a place for people to fish, walk, run and bike, all the while taking in the sights of the water and landscape beyond. It is a lovely place on my route for walking or running.

The other day I came across some graffiti that had been spray painted on a part of the bridge's aging pavement. "Even if you win the race," it said, "you're still a RAT!" Included with message were spray-painted images of the Three Blind Mice, one in red, one in white and one in blue.

It was a bit ironic really to be running at the time, listening to music through my headphones, contemplating a to-do list in my head and come across a reference to the rat race. And I began to wonder: Am I still even in the rat race anymore?

The rat race, of course, is that euphemistic term that applies to the self-defeating pursuit of working too hard to get ahead, stay afloat. In the normal scheme of our lives, in the every day routine of work, we sometimes feel like the lab rat navigating the maze or the rat on the wheel, running fast but getting nowhere.

The fact that it's called a race raises the notion that we're competing against each other for money, for status, for a higher rung on the ladder at work. We navigate the maze and run in the wheel in pursuit of a nice house in a nice neighborhood with good schools for our kids. We're always racing to get ahead.

But I think that changes as you get older. It definitely changes when you're out of the workforce.

It's not that we're not in the race anymore, it's that the race priorities change. We might be a lap or two behind, we could be a couple of miles behind the race leaders, but we don't care. The rat race can leave us behind at the starting line for all we care.

As I got older, as I approached retirement I got less worried about the self-defeating aspects of the rat race. I'd gotten as far as I was going to get, which was pretty far, and I wasn't going to worry about it anymore. It didn't matter that work sometimes became a maze of worry. It didn't matter that I was running on the wheel and getting nowhere, at least I was getting my exercise of earning a living, providing for my family.

In semi-retirement it's different. There's still work to be done, but it's a different work, at a different pace, on a different rat race course altogether. My pace is driven by me, not by someone else's clock or someone else's deadlines or someone else's expectations. It's like I'm in a rat race of one, competing against myself. And I don't really care what place I'm in.

There will always be a rat race of one kind or another. I know I'm not the fastest rat in the race, not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, not the sharpest knife in the drawer. And that's just fine.