The Dark Side Of Hustle Culture And What To Do Instead

 - How Forgetting Where You Came From Guarantees The Fall You Never See Coming

By Stella Stevenson      

The lights were never too bright in Elijah’s early world. Just a single bulb swinging from the cracked ceiling of a two-room home. Humble, dim, and warm. The kind of light that made shadows stretch across the walls like silent watchers. His mother’s hands, coarse from years of scrubbing, sewing, lifting, were the first cradle he knew. His father’s silence was never cruel, just heavy. Like the weight of a man carrying too much but saying too little.

Elijah grew in that house like a vine in poor soil, slow but determined. His shoes were second-hand and always a size too big. His dreams were the opposite, too tight, always bursting at the seams. He wanted more. Not out of greed. Just hunger. A hunger to not have his children eat boiled yam every night because rice was a luxury. A hunger to wear clothes that didn’t belong to someone else first.

His mother’s voice often carried through the thin walls at night, humming songs from a better time. Songs of longing and faith and memory. Songs that held the house together like glue. She prayed loudly too. Not because God was deaf. But because her hope had no volume control.

He saw the sacrifices. She skipped meals so he could eat. His father never bought new clothes but made sure Elijah had books. No one spoke about it. Love rarely needs a narrator.

Elijah’s chance came like a whisper. A neighbour’s cousin who knew someone abroad. An opening at a small college. A scholarship barely enough to live on but enough to leave. His bags were light but his dreams were swollen.

He left. Promising to send money back. Promising to visit. Promising to stay the same.

At first, he did. He called every Sunday. Sent money once a month. But the city had long arms and velvet hands. It cradled him, kissed his forehead, whispered new dreams. Dreams with bigger rooms and brighter bulbs.

He changed his accent. Then his name. First just dropping the last name to make it ‘cleaner’. Then taking a new one altogether. He laughed when people couldn’t pronounce his mother’s name. Called it “too ethnic”. Forgot the prayer songs. Replaced them with jazz he didn’t understand but felt was elite.

His hands, once callused from helping his mother fetch water, were now soft from air conditioning and never lifting. His voice, once shaped by gratitude, now curled with arrogance. He spoke of ‘self-made’ success. Of ‘pulling himself up’. As though no one had held the rope for him.

Fame came quietly but stayed loudly. A tech startup. A brilliant idea. Investment. Media coverage. Magazine covers with headlines like “From Nothing to Nowhere But Up.”

Nothing.

That word haunted the hands that had held him.

Back home, his mother aged twice as fast. Illness crept into her bones. Letters went unanswered. Calls were missed. She didn’t complain. She never did. But she whispered his name into the air sometimes. Not out of anger. Just memory.

Then he fell.

Not all at once. At first it was whispers about embezzlement. Then full-blown investigations. Investors pulled out. Partners jumped ship. The headlines turned cold. “Elijah: The Rise and Sudden Fall.”

Bank accounts frozen. Friends vanished. Even the ones he bought.

And just like that, the hands that once applauded him folded into pockets.

He returned.

Not in a limo. On a bus. Head down. Bag torn at the side. Clothes that looked borrowed from the life he once mocked.

The road home felt longer. The streets had new names. But the air still smelled like woodsmoke and rain on red soil.

His house was smaller now. Or maybe he had grown too big inside. He knocked. Once. Twice. The door creaked. And there she was.

She didn’t say anything. Just looked at him like he was both lost and found. Her hands trembled as they reached for his face. He broke. Right there. On the doorstep. Fell to his knees. Whispered apologies in a voice he hadn’t used in years.

She didn’t need them. Mothers don’t.

She just held him.

He stayed for weeks. Helped around. Cooked with her. Ate from the same chipped plates. Laughed at old stories. Remembered.

And one day, she asked, not accusing, just curious, “Did you forget us?”

He looked away.

Because the truth is, he had.

Not all at once. But slowly. Like forgetting the lyrics to a song you once sang every day.

He had traded gratitude for glamour. Replaced memories with ambition. Turned his back on the hands that made him because he thought he no longer needed them.

But he did.

Success built on forgetfulness is always fragile. It cracks. And when it does, only the hands you once knew can catch you.

He started again. Not from scratch. From roots. And this time, he carried the names. His father’s silence. His mother’s songs. The neighbours who watched over him. The teachers who stayed after school.

He spoke at events. But now he told the full story. Not the polished one. The real one. About hunger and boiled yam. About prayers through thin walls. About how forgetting isn’t falling. But it leads there.

He created a foundation. Not in his name. But in his mother’s. She passed two years later. Peacefully. A photo of him as a boy clutched in her hands.

Today, Elijah walks with a limp. Not physical. A soulful one. The kind that comes from falling hard and getting up slow.

He says thank you more now. He calls it breathing.

Because gratitude isn’t a choice.

It’s survival.