What if the Grind is the Point?
The Passive Income Trap
I keep hearing this idea from entrepreneur coaches and influencers: “Stop trading time for money. Sell something. Create passive income.” Then you’ll be free, they seem to say.
And while there’s wisdom in that for some—especially those who’ve already built something meaningful—it feels so empty to me as a life goal.
Because even if all of us could make all the passive income in the world, we’d still have laundry. We’d still need sleep. Still clean the same kitchen over and over again. Life is made of rhythms, and no passive income stream can “fix” that.
And maybe we’re not meant to try to fix it.
What Ecclesiastes Teaches About Being Human
The book of Ecclesiastes gets the reputation for being depressing—”vanity, vanity, all is vanity!” and all that. But it goes so much deeper, and since learning more about it in college I find myself regularly thinking back to what it teaches as a comfort to me in my stress.
It emphasizes our finitude—our limits. We’re not God. We have limited knowledge, power, and time. My professor once encouraged us to think about how much of our lives we spend just staying alive, meeting our body’s basic needs. We spend almost half our lives sleeping. We spend hours each week gathering, preparing, and consuming food. Then we still have to clean it all up, wash our bodies and our clothes, and take care of our homes. Being a human being is exhausting. Just as “all streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full,” we clean dishes and clothes and floors only to dirty them again. Just as the sun “goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises,” we show up to work each day to pay bills that will be back next month.
Life is made of rhythms, and no passive income stream can “fix” that.
The Gift (and Burden) of Affluence
I know, I know, so far there’s nothing encouraging about this. But here’s the thing: we have the luxury of so much convenience, such a high standard of living, that we actually have time left over to wonder about things like accomplishment and deeper purpose. And that can be a truly wonderful thing. I’m so grateful for that.
But it can also give us a big sense of dread that we’ll never live up to our life’s purpose or make something of ourselves, or a constant nagging anxiety that we’re not doing enough. We see life as getting in the way of our living, constantly trying to just wrap up the daily, weekly, and monthly rhythms that make us human so we can get to the good stuff already. And it causes so much frustration.
One way to shake ourselves out of this frantic cycle is to remember we only have it because of our affluence. Right now I’m rereading Jen Hatmaker’s For the Love (I’ll be honest, I’d no longer feel confident endorsing this author, but I did really enjoy most of this book!). One thing she emphasizes in the beginning chapters is this: “If it’s not true for a single Christian mom living in Haiti, then it’s not true.” Because truth isn’t relative. And thinking about how the narrative in our head would look on someone living in a third-world country is a speedy way to bring us back down to earth.
My Struggle with Giftedness
One area where I’ve really struggled with this is my intellect. My mom ran the gifted program at my school, so from early elementary I knew that I was very intellectually gifted. And if I’m honest, I’ve lived almost my whole life with a tucked-away angst about it. Why did God give me this gift, and what on earth was I supposed to do with it? I wandered through high school and college and unemployment and kindergarten teaching and the beginnings of motherhood loving my life but secretly feeling like I had some unknown mission left unfinished and I wasn’t making progress. It began to feel less like a gift and more like a burden.
But a few months ago this thought came back to me: “There are people living in mud huts in Africa with higher IQs than me. They will never do anything ‘big’ or ‘impressive’ in the world’s eyes with that gift. And God knew that and gave it to them anyway.” If it’s possible for them to honor God with that gift simply by living the life they were given, then the same is true for me. Sure, there’s something to being a good steward with what you’ve been given (and Lord knows I’ve been given so much), but maybe just maybe, this pressure we feel to do big things is self-inflicted.
The Weight we Weren’t Meant to Carry
To be honest? Maybe we think too highly of ourselves. We think much more rests on our shoulders than actually does. I fall for this lie every single day. And then I read the book of Ecclesiastes, and I’m reminded that this thing we call the grind is actually called life, and that we risk never enjoying it if we’re always trying to get it out of the way. That’s why the author comes to this conclusion: “So I decided there is nothing better than to enjoy food and drink and to find satisfaction in work. Then I realized that these pleasures are from the hand of God” (Ecclesiastes 2:24, NLT).
this thing we call the grind is actually called life, and that we risk never enjoying it if we’re always trying to get it out of the way.
Embracing the Grind
So let’s do the big thing if we get the opportunity. Let’s take advantage of the gift that living in such an affluent society is and the unique opportunities it affords us. But I’m starting to realize that we won’t ever really enjoy those opportunities if we mistake them for the point of living. Let’s also enjoy making dinner, and cleaning it up, and giving baths to squirmy babies, and going to bed early because we’re exhausted and that goal can wait for tomorrow, or next month, or next year. Let’s enjoy the sun on our face and the rest of being present in the moment. Let’s embrace that part of the beauty of being human is in our limits, because God made us that way and still chose us as His favorites, and still delights in using us to do His work. And that is where His glory shines the most, isn’t it? Where we are weak, He is strong. So if you need me, I’ll be here, building a business during naptime, but trying every day not to confuse that for my purpose. Because friends, we were made for all of it.
