Hustle Culture

Hustle culture can seem omnipresent in the city.

Cars rush forward at the break of dawn because hurry is the queen bee of the hive. Stoplight to stoplight, interstate entry to interstate exit, drivers hope to save ten seconds, for the sake of being on time (the white rabbit is always a slave to the queen). Their mood and their morale are fully dependent on the mercy of the stoplight and the traffic congestion. The roads, and their vehicles, are therefore their masters.

Breakfast is not so much an experience as it is an inconvenience, solved via the drive-through.

Coffee is slammed, not sipped.

There are agendas for the day. Emails to answer. Calls to take. Appointments to arrive at.

The best to-do list, according to hustle culture, is one that forever adds and never subtracts.

To that I say, the best to-do list is one thrown in the garbage and forgotten!

A breakfast is better spent over three hours than over three minutes. Give me jokes, countless cups of good coffee (and no deadline to finish them), merry company, and sunshine! Let me taste real food and engage with real people.

A rushed drive to work is best replaced by a slow walk through a forest.

A screen is best replaced by a book, a painting, or a music album to listen to.

An obsession over retirement is best replaced by a spontaneous and fun hobby for today.

Fretting over the future is best replaced by contentment for this beautiful, precious moment, a moment in which we are aware of our own existence.

This is what I aspire to… which is why I’ll take my time with my coffee this morning.

Conversion to Machine

I enter age 37 with a desire to take a trip and get lost on a random adventure. In a banal daily work routine, which can feel like a constant slideshow of indistinguishable and bland virtual meetings, interactions seem progressively colder and more detached. Work hours pass in purgatorial fashion. All smiling is off-camera. All laughter is on mute. There is an agenda and we must tackle it. We must perform. There is no time for small talk. No time for warmth.

The conversion to machine is gradual and is predicated on the need for comfort.

I try to counter these dark feelings, which I write about freely here, with cycling. Cycling is purely for me, the most selfish of hobbies. Adults generally don’t give a damn that I can ride a bike really far. There’s no one to impress. It’s not like my old days as a swimmer, when I won to gain the adulation of everyone around me. I just find cycling fun. Adults are often too consumed with their own consumption to be concerned with activities involving movement. Cycling is my antidote to the soul sucking virus that is careerism.

Is there still a ghost in the adults of today, or has the spirit left the shell?

Virtual work means that jokes are followed by silence and emails are followed by a false sense of urgency.

“This is the new trend!” I’m told, but I note that the general population has gained misery, weight, and anxiety since the pandemic. There is always a trade-off for convenience. Faust doesn’t grant wishes without taking something in return.

Years ago, I was lost somewhere in Russia. It was a random trip I took while living in China. It’s a coastal city with a relatively friendly atmosphere.

Getting lost is actually pretty fun; cycling reminds me of that when I take a wrong turn. Trips remind me of that when I meander aimlessly through the foreign city streets. Adults hate being lost, but kids generally love it. Adults prefer predictability and assurance. A destination is the ultimate form of salvation for the worker. They want a linear path without bumps. Point A to Point B, and not a minute to waste.

Yet the white rabbit is always a slave to the queen, as Alice in Wonderland showed. But the modern adults wants pavement, an air conditioned environment, and a to-do list that forever grows, forever demanding haste. I cannot relate: I find solace in the rocky terrain of a faraway trail, where haste is revealed to be arbitrary.

I remember hiking Eagle’s Nest Hill in Vladivostok and quickly getting lost, somewhere off the trail due to a lack of focus, and not really caring. Time ceases to matter when there is no agenda. Can adults abandon agendas for awhile? Who cares if the paved route is far away? I remember being somewhere high, on a bluff, overlooking the city. So I still arrived at some interesting destination. It’s the randomness and unpredictability that I prefer. I was on the opposite side of the world, which is both thrilling and terrifying.

The computer, and its primary appendage the phone, is placed at the altar of the modern posh careerist. It demands of its flock a new form of faith and a false set of promises. Mortality can be avoided, it says, with the swipe of a credit card, the pop of a pill bottle, or the adherence to a politician. Swiping requires money, which requires work, which requires sitting and staring and hurrying.

May we all be lost somewhere, in a strange city we’ve never been to, and wander aimlessly, without an agenda, in search of new adventures. Maybe somewhere, in the midst of that wandering, we’ll reencounter our long lost inner child.

A Yearner’s Dilemma

The boy sat at the crest of the sandy New Mexico hill and gazed out toward the pastel-colored horizon. The air was still and the sun seethed his flesh. He didn’t mind the heat. The sweat reminded him that he was still alive, that he could still feel discomfort. If I could just finish school and get into college, he thought, I will have made it. I won’t need to worry anymore.

The student waited anxiously in his college dormitory for his exam grades to appear on his computer screen. He refreshed the screen continuously, hoping for the grades that would lead him towards salvation in the form of salary. If I can just finish college and get into Grad school, I will have done what I need to do, he thought. I will have made it. I won’t need to worry anymore.

The young graduate sat at his newly purchased office desk and stared at a phone that wouldn’t ring. Any day the company’s HR department would call to let him know whether he was selected for the position. If I can just get a good job I will have done everything I set out to do, he thought. I will have made it. I won’t need to worry anymore. I’ll have a salary.

The young professional calculated his new retirement plan to gauge whether it was trending towards his financial goals. These goals were fed to him via his company and told him whether or not his life would be secure in old age. Four years into work and he was still far off-target. He wouldn’t have his annual health insurance, life insurance, or vacation savings at an adequate level to keep from going under. Heart attacks are on the rise, after all. So he stared at his financial figures. Numbers floated in the space of his computer screen, but the numbers were not high enough. If I can just have another one hundred thousand dollars, I will have made it, he thought. I’ll have everything I need. I can finally stop chasing.

Having suffered a mid-life crisis in spite of a generous salary raise, the newly anointed executive stared at his newfound gray hairs and furrowed brow. Who is this balding and debilitating thing staring back at me through the mirror, this creature that was once a child? Now the kids have expenses for their sports. The family food bill is a flood that’s drowning his hopes and dreams. Damn their carnivorous appetites and their needs for toys. I was supposed to have made it, the executive thought to himself. But I’m falling farther behind. He couldn’t even begin to think about college expenses for the kids, nonetheless retirement. He’d be bound to virtual work as an octogenarian, crippled in a nursing home yet still reviewing spreadsheets. But if I can just get another two hundred thousand dollars, he thought, maybe I’ll have what I need. Maybe I can stop worrying. I will have made it.

The newly retired corporate careerist left the office at noon a free man. He was scared: hopefully Social Security would be high enough to cover his future costs. He had no benefits. And to make matters worse he had crippling anxiety from the past decades of work, and his fears steadily debilitated his cardiovascular health. He had enough, but did he have enough to truly be free? His dreams of European vacations still seemed out-of-reach. Maybe if I work part-time, he thought, I’d still have time to get there. He just needed an extra hundred thousand dollars. Time was ticking. The males in his family have a history of strokes and most of these strokes hit in the late 60s. He was 67. And yet he hadn’t done anything but try to get ahead. None of it felt fair. He didn’t have anything that he was entitled to.

Still, he thought, just another hundred thousand dollars and I’ll truly be free. I’ll have what I need to cover my bases. I will have made it. I can finally stop worrying.

He thought of the little boy on the New Mexico hill and wished he’d learned to stop yearning sixty years prior.

Fork in the Road

I find that my most joyful time on a bike ride is when I stray from my plan. It is when I ignore the voice in my head that whispers to exhaust myself, to burn the maximum amount of calories, and to “pedal at full speed.” The further I stray from this voice, the more at peace I am.

This morning I found myself at such a metaphorical fork in the road, ten miles north, along the Mississippi River. I was four miles shy of my “planned route,” which is typically the Chain of Rocks bridge, but a flock of geese was feeding in the moist grass to my left, and there was a balmy scent in the air that strengthened as I pedaled farther away from the city.

Rather than “maximize my workout,” I shunned this inner competitor and stopped. I parked my bike against a tree and watched the geese, without any particular plan to resume my ride or turn back. I did not have a watch or a phone with me and I realized just what a brutally manufactured device the clock is for so many who live and die by its limitations and permissions.

Suddenly moments passed more slowly and with gratitude I stopped activity and absorbed my surroundings. As I breathed, my own anxieties over tomorrow calmed and the diabolical planner within me died, and I felt better for it. Let my inner planner die: he lived too long already!

It is a modern mantra, I think, that an idle mind is a wasting one, but in fact the opposite is true. An active mind festers and an idle mind blossoms. The less I try to do, the more I am able to think and the more I am able to be at peace with my own existence.

How few have the courage to stop all duty and appreciate the stillness of nature. Those at work say time flies by, and this is true for anyone in a constant chase for tomorrow and a constant bracing for “the next step,” heeding for “the next thing needed for fulfillment.”

Life is brutally diluted under this mindset. What was organic becomes a construction, a ladder to climb that is in a constant state of lengthening, and when one reaches the end of the lifespan, there is nothing to do but look up and realize that the ladder still extends out of sight. Then the mind will cry in anguish, “But I had so much higher to climb!” But who’s version of fulfillment do you climb for?

If we grant ourselves permission to halt our inner urges for progress, time ceases to rush as well, and ironically, I believe, the years graciously slow.

You deserve to own each day, and therefore make it distinct, even in your chores. You deserve to spend your hours freely and merrily, to sleep and dream, to be outside, to have a picnic that lasts for hours instead of the brief office lunch in which employees tragically cram their food in haste, often at their work desks, under artificial lights, breathing artificial air.

A “year” spent in leisure is infinitely better than a year spent in labor so long as the stopwatch, and the compulsion to plan, are removed from its borders.

A Last Time for Everything

As the first gray hairs settle in just above my ears and my ankle heals, it dawns on me that I may be approaching the midpoint of my lifespan. Who’s to say with certainty? We have no control over the future, but if considering the median age of a male life, I’m nearing the midway marker.

The car hit last year struck me more mentally than physically (and that’s saying something because it struck me with pretty good force). By this I mean it spurred a number of realizations about mortality. The chief realization among them that is on my mind today is that there will be a last time for everything.

I was fairly certain upon feeling my foot bend the wrong direction against the road that I had ran for the last time. That was it, and suddenly it was gone like the rabbit in a magic show’s disappearing act. I was lucky enough that it wasn’t the case. Nonetheless, that day will eventually arrive, and I must accept this.

If that day did mark my final run, I did not get to wish my running days goodbye. There would be no “festive final run” or “emotional farewell to the act.” It’s simply there one day and gone the next. I suspect that most final acts end the same way and that most of us in the west do not realize this.

One day, there will be a last hike. There will be a last dream, a last bike ride, and a last beach trip. There will be a last glass of wine, a last kiss, and a last act of love. There will be a last dessert and a last witnessed sunrise. There will be a last hug. Mothers will see their babies become adults for the last time. Fathers will play catch with their kids for the last time. I will see a last colored hair fall from my face and see this city for the last time. I will write a final blog and a final story. I will read a final book. I will share a final joke. And of course, there will be a last breath of oxygen.

I suspect these moments happen, they pass, and we often take them for granted. We don’t expect the end of any to be near, but each day likely presents the final time we will ever do, or feel, or think something. Every day is in some way a final act.

In the daily rush that modern culture attempts to sweep me into I find that the act of “hurrying to what’s next” makes these final acts even less apparent. They are hidden by the greatest magician of them all: industry. In the chase for something better, for fewer problems, and for perhaps a glimpse at immortality, we lose something important today and are unaware that we ever lost it.

I don’t think this to put myself in a gloomy or nihilistic mood, but to note that it’s worthwhile to pause and appreciate what I have, and what I’m doing, at this moment. And to appreciate what I’ve done and where I’ve been.