2 Minutes. Go!

The finish line is an illusion. They told you it was there to keep you running long after you were tired. Long after you should have up and quit. 

Once you know it's sleight of hand, it's obvious, but you have to look at it just the right way. Most people don't. Most people insist it's still there, sometimes gold and shimmering, waiting to give them what they worked for. It's a comforting deceit, but it will always prove false.

If you stop running, people look at you like you're crazy, and it doesn't matter how logical it is to you. I was tired. This is fair. I was thirsty, hungry. This is also fair. I wanted to look at the way the light played on the sunflowers...this is when people start using labels. 

You must be a commie liberal. You must be a redneck reactionary. You must be a fat cat capitalist. You must be a government charity case. Hippie! You must always be the one to suffer two dimensionally, because two dimensions are all you can take in with a two-second, surface-level glance. 

Who's got your six when all you have is two's. Even without your propaganda glasses on... 

They're going to move the finish line until they are done with you, and then they will tell you that the finish line was only an idea. An ideal. Or it was there, but you didn't work hard enough. You didn't sacrifice enough. You were a bad cog. Bad cogs don't get rewards. 

As a consolation, there is one finish line that never changes, but most people don't recognize it when they get there. And by the time they are past it, they have ceased to recognize anything at all.