Why I don’t See the Hustle Culture Taking me Anywhere : Delights of the Ordinary No.10
i hope to continue this conversation for as long as you let me into your lives on an ordinary weekend afternoon.
Hi there!
I am wonderfully and plainly delighted by the unadorned ordinary things. They create enough rhythm in life to cut short the desire for some ultra-glamorous way of living.
The intention of this newsletter is to share with you stories and thoughts to make some meaning into our ordinary lives (which otherwise have such a low success rate). As a woman who in a way is abandoning her Nutritionist job, trying to pull strings up in the world of writing, and in the process is grappling with the vagaries of the social media landscape, the hustle culture, mental health, and social trappings, shares all with you through the lens of culture, faith, history, poetry, art and wonder.
Though I delight in the ordinary ways I find that a lot of otherwise stuff enters into our stream of verve and goals. Because we somewhere secretly desire to climb someplace up. Not sure where is that up, how will or shall we define it?
Yet we would not know when a narrative, a habit or a dream can turn toxic. We would never know when we are sucked into a different paradigm of hustle living. Some things creep in so silently, tiptoeing that when they start to overpower us, we are not even aware of it. It is like a vortex of a real-life situation.
What exactly is Hustle Culture?
To start - what hustle culture is not!
Hustle culture is not a synonym for working hard. It doesn’t equate to putting in your efforts. It is all about running. Running mindlessly. Not finding enough time to concentrate on the deep work.
A modern cultural phenomenon of our world where “we’re in the fast lane. We work long hours, we live in big cities,…we’ve got side hustles going on. And to get ahead you kinda have to live this way. We know it and we embrace it. Exactly.”
Olga Molina, Associate Professor of Social Work at the University of Central Florida School writes that it is a culture “that glorifies working hard and long hours, often at the expense of mental and physical health. Hustle culture is when a workplace environment places an intense focus on productivity, ambition, and success, with little regard for rest, self-care, or any sense of work-life balance.”
Cultures make the environment!
They assemble spaces, develop vibes and much motivation to work towards a personal or a corporate vision. Cultures are extensions of what we are prioritizing in our lives. What sort of equipped community do we aspire to make? A micro-culture has all the potential to become a macro-culture.
I didn’t have a caveat about getting life work my way. But in the process, hustling embittered me with so much of a burned-out phenomenon that anxiety, guilt and toxic positivity made it all into my vocabulary and hardly I realized it.
We are making or made into godspeed hustlers, we are oblivious to when and how all of this shapeshifts into toxicity.
That is the very culture we create.
Why I don’t see the hustle culture taking me anywhere now.
Information by itself seldom transforms. And hustling by itself will never transform our lives. It has to be much deeper than only scampering and hustling for our visions.
Hustle culture crept in silently, killing in me the very human, and I found-
hustle culture don’t take breaks.
hustle culture doesn’t sleep enough.
hustle culture doesn’t stop when you’re tired; you stop when you’re done.
work hard, and when you think you’ve worked your hardest, push harder.
And I don’t see myself doing any of this in the long run. At least that is the wisdom I have gathered in the last one and a half years of trying to live my purpose.
Sacrifices people made to get a side hustle started.
Working Hard is incomplete without Rest.
And as the world runs around toppling over each other, semi-happy about success and about money and power, I believe that my major senses are dimming into a restful solace along with work.
Resting always doesn’t mean sleep. A true resting is not devoid of work and labour. It would mean making your labour a continuous project without being ladened with jargon like ‘burnt out,’ ‘FOMO,’ and ‘guilt of not doing much or performing.’ A rested space is needed to undo the inner toxic culture or move towards toxicity.
Resting is acknowledging tiredness and anxiousness as a part of life and softening with it. It is and will be a constant fight to seek rest. Yet we have to honour that rest is not just an exercise but maturing in life, such that it will create in us stretches to find joy in what we do, much more meaningful than just decomposing ourselves to fending for money and redundant success.
We learn to rest while we are working. We don’t pick out a seed from the soil to see if it is growing its roots. We let it lay there, wait and work around it.
Do we throw money out of the window?
We all, me too, have found some intention in earning money. it is important to survive after all. And so I hope we find that both play a major role. I find real meaning in the two - one for its practicality and the other for the deeper joys. Yet, when I evolve and move ahead I should find that joy making itself alive, and money, though is important, will maintain its practical dignity.
Someday, I see that as we learn to make rest and labour both our priority, the sheen of money slowly fades into uncovering joy in our endeavours, dreams, jobs and everything in between.
These are stages and we ought to aspire to mature and refine who we are.
And now, my faves of the week -
To relax: Since it is the hustle culture we are scuffling with, give this splashing on-screen pool a chance to relax your senses. Click this RELAX button in the centre and see the aqua-gorgeous playfulness as you move the cursor or your finger around. Amp up the volume too. (Also Link)
To cook: To fend off the basic Indian style gobhi ki sabzi (aka cauliflower stir fry) or Mumbai’s Pao Bhaji, try this brilliantly gorgeous cauliflower-y comfort food known as Curried Cauliflower Cheese Folio Pie. The name is long but I guess we can rest along the real process of cooking which surely is worth the love. Click for this recipe by Ottolenghi and watch the video.
To ponder: “It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill: that is the very worst thing you can do. Let the thrill go—let it die away—go on through the period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follow—and you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time. But if you decide to make thrills your regular diet and try to prolong them artificially, they will get weaker and weaker, and fewer and fewer, and you will be bored, disillusioned old man for the rest of your life.”
- C. S. Lewis. Mere Christianity.
I always root for ordinary lives as being extraordinary. I always root that there is a charm in the daily chores and they are precisely meant to be simple and ordinary by nature. Maybe I smell some bread baking somewhere around and some good old earth being done wet by the rains. And the toasted coffee mildly fills the humid wind with its warm breezy smell. I prefer slowing down and being able to expand my lungs mid-way. Just a sigh of aliveness in me!
I hope to continue this conversation for as long as you let me into your lives on an ordinary weekend afternoon.
I hope that in disclosing my flawed messy journey, it lets you have the permission to celebrate your beautiful fractured brokenness too. That is how we are leading with authenticity and wonderment.
You may have a rested week,
20 years from now the only people that will remember you worked late or checked emails on weekends will be your kids.
Thank you for the very thought provoking article that challanges me. I enjoyed the read and the hustle culture resonated so clearly with me. Keep writing this has been a reminder and has helped me see things from a new perspective.