There is No "Rush"

We do we tell our youth they must do ‘everything’ by the time they’re 30 in order to be successful? Why do we feel some compulsion to ‘level up’? Or to have 5 investment properties like our colleagues? Or to get that promotion by a record age? Or to have $x in the bank in a record time?

It’s odd, really. We feel a compulsion to do ‘more’, to be the ‘best’, to be the first.

Why.

Life is marathon, not a sprint. As cliché as this sounds, it rings no less true today in the 21st century than it did whenever this axiom was first uttered. True success comes from being content. Contentment does not come from doing it all; it comes from losing yourself in the process and being eternally present.

Rushing to achieve things is not being ‘present’; it forces us to live in the future. We impose future standards upon our present selves, and in so doing, we feel like we’re perpetually ‘behind’ where we ‘need’ to be.

In short, rushing forward to our future goals is a recipe for unhappiness and utter despair.
There is quite the satisfaction in taking your time with things, in letting things ripen and fall. True progress is not made from being the first, but rather being the best, and being the best comes from much thoughtful deliberation, conscious decisions and saying ‘no’ to things that fundamentally will not help you.

As Epictetus says:

“Nothing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen”

The ‘rush’ is a social construct. It forces us to be perpetually unhappy. Do not be one of those people subject to the ‘rush’.

Realise this deeply:

THERE IS NO ‘RUSH’

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If I were to be brutal, I would say that work occupies more of our time, our mental stamina and mental bandwidth than anything else, whether it be family, relationships or hobbies. No sooner are we asked, “what do you do?” when people first strike a conversation with us. Work is more than just an activity we leave behind after 5pm; it is our passion, and more fundamentally, our identity.

Perhaps it is more apt to think of work as its own living ‘thing’; a living, breathing monster in and of itself. We become that monster.

How, then, do we tame the monster of work so it does not consume us? That is something we shall attempt to answer in the next five letters. This is the fifth of five letters that I shall be writing on work. The next letters will be focused on other aspects of life - Love, relationships, personhood... you name it.

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