Growing up on an assembly line

Who has the time to stop and smell the coffee? We are the children of a systematic world expected to be born overachievers whose lives and decisions are driven by the million expectations of our parents and the rest of the world. We start running in a lifelong marathon the day we start school. Weekends are a delusion and vacations are synchronized hiatuses to catch a little breath before we start running again. You know something is quite not right when you find yourself envious of the life your dog leads. An ideal life without any qualms about the past or apprehensions about the future. Talk about living in the moment.
The downside of being a living and breathing homo sapien in the twenty first century is that we have forgotten the meaning of the term. The "wise man" is hardly wise anymore. We have complicated our lives a bit too much and entangled ourselves in material wealth so much so that we are hardly the masters of our lives. Life's journey has become nothing but a profit and loss statement, defined by what we have achieved and what we failed to achieve.
While I wouldn't exactly want the life of a dog..it would be nice not to worry about the future or the past. It would be nice not to be pushed around by numerous expectations (often unsaid but understood). It would be nice to be your own boss. But its hard to go against the current. We are a species mass produced, grown on an assembly line, and expected to succeed without any malfunctions.