The concept of the American Dream was popularized in the 20th century.
It was the belief that your life wasn’t bound by your social class or economic status, that if you were resilient and worked hard, you could build the life you wanted.
We lived in a land of opportunity, and the world was ours for the taking if we wanted to give it a try.
That was enough for us for awhile.
But over the last few decades, hustle culture, or the belief that every other area of our lives should be sacrificed on the altar of productivity and attainment, has been on the rise, and our understanding of the American Dream as a simple upward economic mobility has evolved with it.
In this hyper-masculine work culture, control has become a foundational value. In some cases, one might even say…
Control is the new American Dream.
We maximize our productivity by refining our daily schedules with perfect edges of efficiency because we control our time.
We are admired for our discipline, rigidity, and self-negation by our colleagues because we control our desires.
We push ourselves harder than everyone else and deny ourselves when what we want doesn’t fit within our goals or agenda for the day because we control our bodies.
We know how to add more to our plates without taking anything off because we control our energy.
We are always on the receiving end of workplace rewards because we control how we are perceived.
What you might begin to notice is that one layer beneath that hyper-productive, high-efficiency, over-scheduled life is control.
Or the new American Dream.
It feels safe to be in control, to eliminate the unmanageable and unpredictable, to be able to count on our bodies and energies to do exactly what we command at every moment.
But control is costing us.
We’re beginning to learn that our ability to stay in control at all times is ultimately unbearable to the human soul.
We see it in the rampant depression, addiction, gambling, numbing, and distraction, in the midlife crises, affairs, divorces, and suicides.
We don’t actually want to be responsible for keeping the world spinning, and yet, here we are believing that we have to try.
This is where we’re seeing the idolization of the new American Dream break down.
You can always do more, have more, and make more, but should you?
You can work more and try harder, but when you leave no space for creativity, boredom, or stillness, you fall out of touch with yourself and the foundational, flowing power that sustains the universe.
You can push yourself to your limit day after day, and while this might seem fine on the surface, it has consequences on a soul level.
This is why the hardest working people you know seem to have everything under control, you might even envy the things that they have…
But if you dig even one foot deep, you’ll find addiction and avoidance, numbing and resentment, compartmentalization and escape.
You might even hear hollow Christian words or spiritual platitudes, but they don’t move you because they’re not rooted—even faith and belief become an area of expertise to acquire, and you can feel it from the idle religious talk of someone who’s learned how to create the Image of a Life.
If you dig, you will not find a stream of love, joy, and peace that overflows.
The hardest working people you know are too tired for that.
If you dig, you’ll find their broken pieces because it’s impossible to be in complete control of your life and move from a place of whole-heartedness.
When control is the goal, we break into fragments and compartments.
“Work is going well, but my marriage is drowning.”
“I feel energized when I lead people at the office, but my kids suck the life out of me.”
“This is work and this is play, balance is an illusion, there is no in-between.”
They believe the myth that you cannot mix effort with ease because everything in their lives comes from a place of force not flow.
But if you’re forcing all of the good things in your life, then you can’t flow with what God has for you.
Where is the goodness in your life that is outside of your control?
Take a moment to close your eyes and meditate on the question.
And if you have two minutes, you can take this a step further and read through these reflection questions for weary hustlers.
When we take time to reflect, we will see that this is where the new American Dream and the gospel collide—in the our day to day lives.
Control is deceptive, an easy trap to fall into. Sure, your house might be bigger on this side of heaven.
But there is no correlation between peace and square-footage.
Control doesn’t allow us to let go, and peace only comes when learn how to.
After all, Jesus told us that it doesn’t matter when we show up to work the vineyard, we all get paid the same at the end of the day.
You can put in twenty hours a week or sixty, doesn’t matter—your value is the same.
Jesus was never rushing or efficient. He was notoriously slow, always stopping to rest or share a meal. And without an efficient schedule, productivity plan, or vision board, he got plenty done in his short lifetime.
Christianity and control do not go hand in hand.
But slow, soulful living that follows desire, energy, and the peace of Christ is the treasure hidden in the field, and when you find it, you sell everything you own because nothing compares to a life built for more love, more joy, and more peace.
As we move towards less control and more openness, stillness, and following, we’ll find that loving and healing ourselves and our neighbor become priorities.
When we let go of control, we open up to what God has for us instead of informing God of what we have to do.
Once upon a time, the American Dream was all about the opportunity to build the life that we wanted.
Do you want to live this usually stressful, occasionally overwhelming, highly-controlled life?
Or was it sold to you as the dream you should have?
Hustle culture hijacked the American Dream, and it might take us some time to unravel the life we’ve been sold to want from what we actually want. Let’s be patient with ourselves.
Control is costing us, let’s give it up for awhile and see what happens.