Whatever happened to the rat race?

Remember the 'rat race?' I kind of miss that term.

When I was in high school and college, students and teachers would talk about the rat race as a pejorative term. It was a dark concept, something to be avoided. No one wanted to be part of it -- working for the man in a 9 to 5 job, busting your tail, never getting any time off....

Boy does that seem like a long time ago. Nine to 5? These days it's more like 9 to 9, round the clock. No one talks about the rat race anymore. Probably because we're all so busy running around the work maze -- what with blackberries, iPhones, smartphones, computers, Twitter -- that we don't notice that we've become the rats. Nowadays if you put up a sign that said 'join the rat race,' there would be a line around the block.

How did this happen? We're getting less and less European every year. We blog on the beach, in the theater, the second we stop out of the subway. Can't miss an email, a phone call, time is money, doncha know? We consider ourselves lucky to have jobs, any jobs.

I just woke up today wondering what happened to that other self we knew as students, when we supposedly cared about time off and living 'la dolce vita.' Come to think of it, that's another term I haven't heard in a very long time.

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