The rest of the year, children are taught to be seen and not heard, following the instructions of those around them and never thinking for themselves, so that they can grow up to fulfill the status quo. Made to feel the way that every child should.Instead of feeling cherished and alive every day of the year, children spend the year looking forward to the one day they get to feel special- their birthday. Children waiting for the day they feel good.He thinks this way of thinking and acting is completely foolish. People are stuck in routine and don’t go anywhere eventually. When people run in circles, it's a very very.:.This feeling is hard to share with others, because it’s private, and a bit messed-up, and it seems like most people go about their daily routines without criticizing or questioning it. Although the narrator may not be suicidal, his unfulfilling, status-quo life is “hard to take”, and he doesn’t see much to live for, either. The narrator finds peace when he dreams of dying, as doing so brings an end to the monotony of his everyday life. The difference between “funny” and “sad” then is not black and white but grey and grey. The narrator repeats “kind of” twice, which emphasizes that even these feelings barely register. “Filling up their glasses” is referring to drinking glasses (i.e., each person is extremely sad, and goes through their life drinking bitterness) or eyeglasses (suggesting that the tears waver in their eyes but never fall past the frames). Since everyone is going through life on automatic, trying hard not to think or show how sad they are, everyone thinks everyone else is fine. Their tears are filling up their glassesĪlthough everyone feels like the narrator, sad and unfulfilled, they hold it back so that their sadness doesn’t show.The imagery of a race sums up this unchanging existence, since many races occur on tracks which quite literally “Go nowhere”. The narrator is stuck in a dull routine, seeing the same old people and doing the same old things over and over again.Įach day, everyone wakes up early to get a head start in the rat race, competing for money or power, but because everyone is stuck in the system, no one really gets ahead.