The Hustle Culture Trap: When Chronos becomes the only god

As a society entrenched in Christianity, many of us think of time as linear, regardless of whether we’re Christian or not. In Christian thought, there is a beginning, a middle (where we are), and an end. Christianity pays very close attention to the end of this line segment (known as eschatology). So, thinking theologically, the belief is that there is a “beginning” in Genesis and an “end” with the Apocalypse.

Outside of theology, we see this line of thought in the secular world: Time begins with the Big Bang and ends at (?) with something like a nuclear war, or maybe when the Sun dies; no one is really sure when Time ends.

But whether it’s theology or in the secular world, time is just a realllllllly long line segment.

In ancient Greece, Chronos was the god of time1. Chronos represents a way to think about time in the traditional sense: it’s clock time, measurable and ticking forward relentlessly in one direction, no matter the situation. (This is also where we get English words like chronological).

Even though we’re not ancient Greeks, when we think about time itself, we already recognize Chronos, even if we don’t know of the god himself.

Sometimes we try to run from Chronos, like I did when I obsessed about my future while stuck in poverty as a child, or sometimes we desperately try to go in the opposite direction, wishing we could go back in time.

Anytime we try to move in a different direction or at a different pace than Chronos, we all learn that as mere mortals, that is not a power we possess.

But even though we may have an uneasy relationship with Time, Chronos is still seductive in many ways.

The clock has already been created, and the calendars are already set, and Chronos, as chronological time, happens whether we want it to or not; so many of us create a routine within Chronos.

If we’re not careful, we let “busyness” take over and go plodding through routines and habits absentmindedly, until Chronos pushes us further and further down the line segment of our lives towards death.

Then there comes a point where we step outside of the busyness, look back, and ask, “Where the hell did the time go?”

But Chronos didn’t go anywhere unexpectedly or suddenly become absent. Time has been right here all along. What was absent was our attention to it, and how we spent our own time within Time.

The Present Moment as a Divine Loophole

As a mere mortal myself, I sure as hell don’t know how to beat Chronos at his own game. I’ve certainly tried, as a child and then as a young adult in the corporate world.

As I get older, I’ve started to notice that there’s something we all have access to that doesn’t fit quite neatly into the line segment of chronological Time: the present moment.

If you’ve ever tried meditation and didn’t like it, you’re probably rolling your eyes at the words “present moment,” but hear me out…

The present moment—meaning the moment RIGHT NOW—right as you’re reading this, is a moment that is outside of Chronos; it is structurally outside of time.

Think about it this way: the present moment has no beginning or end; it simply is. There is no moment when the present moment began, and there’s no definitive moment when it ends.

Well, I suppose there are two ways it ends: 1) when you stop focusing on it, and resume your normal routines or busy schedule, worrying about to-dos and future deadlines, or 2) at death. Maybe this is a bit macabre, but in both instances, your mind is absent from this present moment.

If we were to think about this in a spiritual (not necessarily religious) way, by focusing on just the present moment (without wishing the past were different or worrying about the future), we participate in the divine. We become like the deathless gods themselves, unaffected by Time (with no beginning or end).

But we’re all mere mortals, after all. Perhaps this is why it is so hard for humans to stay in the present moment: we find ourselves going right back to wishing the past were different, or we start worrying about the future again.

Meditation is really difficult, after all.

The Toxic Side of the Present Moment: Productivity as a Drug

A phrase that has always rubbed me the wrong way is “time management.” In a society as obsessed with productivity as ours is, “time management” is a thought that seems to hardly get questioned. After all, who wouldn’t want to get more done with the short amount of time we have left? YOLO, right2?

But given how long Time has been a thing, and how long humans have had an uneasy relationship with it, we humans are pretty naive to think that we can manage an entity like Chronos.

If we are to focus on maximizing the very short time we have on this earth, then it would be better to think about ways to manage ourselves within Time.

But as soon as we start to think about managing what we do with the unknown amount of time that is given to us, it’s too easy to let our hustle culture’s obsession with productivity take over. We start talking about getting “laser-focused” on goals or getting on the “fast track” to success.

Laser focused? This is not a human quality. Lasers are literally machines.

Fast track? We’re not race horses, no matter how often we try to fit blinders over our eyes so that we only see the “straight and narrow path3” to potential success ahead.

One of my absolute favorite books on productivity is Four Thousand Weeks4 by Oliver Burkeman. In the book, Burkeman focuses on the depressingly short time we have (on average, 4000 weeks) and on how best to live that time without wasting so much of it on chasing after the drug-high of productivity.

As a previous productivity junkie himself, when not trying to cross more to-dos in a shorter amount of time, he’d worry about maximizing the little leisure time he had. Trying to capture the moment and live life to the fullest created an “existential overwhelm” of cramming more life experiences in just to say he was “living life to the fullest,” rather than actually living it.

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Thank you for reading!

Hustle Culture worships exclusively at the altar of Chronos, but maybe we don’t need to be exclusive with Chronos anymore.

Though chronological time, as an entity with a beginning and a straight line to an end, seems inevitable and like the only choice we have, that’s not the case.

The ancients viewed time a little differently than we do today, and if we pause long enough to let ourselves get pleasantly lost in creating art, bonding with friends and family, or spending time with nature, we can sometimes catch a glimpse of this different version of time out of the corner of our eye.

But that’s a conversation for the next article in Through the Mythic Glass. Though if you want a hint, just ask RM from the K-pop boy band, BTS.

Until then,

Monica

1. Not to be confused with Kronos, the child-eating father of Zeus and the other Olympians.

2. When my spouse read this article before publication, he said, “Does anyone even still use ‘YOLO’ or know what it means anymore?” Then, I sadly added this footnote and felt my old bones grind into millennial dust.

3. I say this with my deepest respect and apologies to Dante, who began his masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, with “Midway along the journey of our life, I woke to find myself in a dark wood, for I had wandered off from the straight path.”

4. This is an affiliate link for Bookshop.org. If you’d like a less expensive used copy, I always recommend looking on Thriftbooks.com (not an affiliate link; I just order a lot from there).