On Hustle Culture & Aristotle’s Golden Mean
Hustle Culture.
It’s working around the clock. It’s “the grind doesn’t stop”. It’s the notion that if we “hustle hard enough”, we’ll make it to some seemingly happier place. It’s not listening to what your body, mind, and soul need, while simultaneously serving someone else’s. It’s like running a marathon as if it were a sprint.
Sounds familiar? I thought so. It’s glorified, it’s noteworthy, and it’s portrayed as a part of the path to success. Unless you’re willing to put in relentless hours while sacrificing other things you might be longing for, how could you expect to be successful? I want to challenge that last statement. Rather, how could you expect to find success or happiness at your destination?
What if your happiness and a true sense of success were closer than you thought? What if it was hidden in every moment, and what if it was hidden in the pockets of your core that have been begging you for a break? In your children who have been longing for you to share time? Or, in a world that is waiting for you to explore it?
Of course, it goes without saying that hard work is necessary. As humans, we’ve grown resilient to many external pressures, and historically we’ve seen how sacrificing short-term satisfaction for long-term gain can be beneficial. We’re built to survive, and a seed of curiosity has been planted in each of us that drives us to question, to connect, to explore the world we live in, and to experience all that is around us.
The key to not getting caught in the cycle of hustle culture is to understand how to delicately dance between two extremes.
Towards Balance.
Is there a middle ground? How can we move towards a more balanced life? These questions, for many of us who’ve fallen victim to hustle culture, will ring loud until we find the answers.
Many years ago, I stumbled across Aristotle’s doctrine of the Golden Mean, which states that every ethical virtue is a condition somewhere between the two extremes — the golden mean. Aristotle’s virtue of courage, for example, can be defined as the golden mean between cowardice and rash behavior. I think about this often and have extrapolated it beyond virtues and towards the granularities of everyday life. This begs the question, how do we find the golden mean of a life situation?
As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy so eloquently puts it:
“Finding the mean in any given situation is not a mechanical or thoughtless procedure, but requires a full and detailed acquaintance with the circumstances.”
In practice, this looks like defining for yourself what constitutes the two extremes in a given situation. As you build resilience in life, these definitions may change, but the concept of becoming deeply acquainted with not only your circumstances, but the state of your current self, remains the same. Once you’ve established what the extremes are, you can figure out where you stand on the spectrum, and decide how long you want to spend there.
Towards action.
To ask ourselves the question “where am I on the spectrum of the two extremes?” in a given situation requires a sense of awareness we may be devoid of while still shackled by hustle culture. Personally, practices such as meditation and deep breathing, prayer, and yoga have been fundamental in allowing me to access my wise mind. These may or may not work for you, but what’s important is you find something that does. Once you arrive at the place where asking yourself this question yields an honest answer, you can create a plan to pull yourself back into a state of balance, somewhere around the golden mean. It’s also important to understand that while you may be at one extreme or the other, you can still find balance even if you are out of equilibrium.
In Conclusion.
This concept is not the be-all-end-all of cultivating a life with more balance, but rather a means to shift your perspective on your definition of balance. This article doesn’t aim to provide answers to the tough questions, but rather to encourage an internal dialogue around what balance means to you, how you can do more of what you love, all while honoring your needs.
I will leave you with a quote by Dr. Teresa Lau:
Balance is what we need in a given moment to express our life force, but to offer something of ourselves to the world, we necessarily must move out of our equilibrium.
What is your relationship with hustle culture? Where can the golden mean be applied in other aspects of your life? I would love to hear your thoughts— leave me a comment below or a private note; your engagement and feedback are always welcomed and honored here.
