Are You Hustling?

I’ve been thinking about a man I once matched with on Bumble. Yes, the dating app. It was years ago. We exchanged an impressive volume of messages. We never met. I stopped responding. Yes, I ghosted him.

He was abroad on a business trip when we were texting. What irritated me wasn’t the distance. It was the performance. He described himself as cultured because he had visited the Louvre and the Uffizi. He had never stepped foot in a local museum.

At the time, we both lived in the greater Los Angeles area. The Broad. LACMA. MOCA. The Getty. The Getty Villa. The Hammer. He hadn’t been to any of them. Worse, he wasn’t interested.

Photo by Helga Wigandt on Unsplash

He did not love art. He loved the appearance of loving art.

He loved the passport stamp. The photo. The implied life.

I can’t remember his name, but I remember the feeling. He has resurfaced in my thoughts as I consider the idea of slow living.

Slow living, for me, is not about moving slowly. It is not procrastination disguised as peace. It is not avoiding life’s harder truths. It is not walking at half-speed through a checklist.

Slow living is about interrupting the reflex to chase. It is about resisting the urge to hunt for the next satisfaction, validation, or catharsis. It is about stepping off the conveyor belt of achievement that never quite arrives anywhere.

We glorify hustle. Corporate cultures reward it with carefully worded praise about being “driven." Exhaustion is reframed as dedication. Overextension becomes proof of ambition. Burnout is worn like a private badge of honor, proof that one is indispensable.

Some of us call it passion. Some of us call it grind. We package it in sleek language and post it online as though depletion were a virtue. But to hustle is to push roughly, to coerce, to pressure, to swindle. When did we decide that was the standard for how we treat ourselves?

Have you been hustling yourself?

I have.

I have done things that looked impressive simply to check them off. So I could feel accomplished. So I could feel enviable. So I could feel that my life was properly lived. The feeling evaporated quickly. What followed was hunger.

Want. Chase. Obtain. Repeat.

Each acquisition required a larger one to sustain the illusion. The cycle tightened. The hunger grew louder. And the word hustle began to look less like ambition and more like compulsion.

It is difficult to sit alone without the next thing waiting to validate us. It is uncomfortable to exist without momentum.

Are you grateful for what you have, or are you grateful that you are on your way to something else?

Will the next milestone satisfy you? Or will it simply sharpen the craving?

Can you stand in silence without attaching yourself to a destination? Without an audience? Without a metric?

And if you cannot, what exactly are you chasing?

_____

More essays:

I Hate That Word… Survivor

Harry, Meghan, and the Price of Privacy

Before You Claim First Amendment Violation, Please First Express Yourself

Kanye West. Ye. Adidas. How About You?

Guilt of Disposable Fashion

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