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Why grin and bear it? The trouble with toxic resilience
There’s no glory in suffering. Personal sacrifice is not part of any job. Let’s call out the persevering spirit for what it is, and hope for change
Philosopher Britney Spears said it back in 2003: “You’re toxic, I’m slippin’ under”. We didn’t listen. Ten years later, she sang, “You’d better work, b***h”. We still didn’t pay attention. It’s only now, in 2023, that we’re seeing the idea of bouncing back or carrying on in the face of adversity, regardless of its mental and emotional toll, as a worrying trait.
Don’t confuse this with toxic positivity (the pressure to remain positive in any eventuality). And don’t dismiss it as privileged whining. Toxic resilience affects individuals, communities, entire cities. Consider how Mumbai is painted as a place where, despite flooding and poor infrastructure, its people trudge to work every monsoon. This isn’t hardy spirit. It’s economic desperation.
Some have had enough. In 2020, Ankur Wadhwa quit his advertising job in Mumbai and returned to Delhi. “I was asked to come in to work even though the road outside my house had shoulder-deep water,” he recalls. “My employers gave me hell, saying ‘No one misses work due to the rains’. I spent six hours trying to get to my office and finally reached at 9pm, which is when I was asked to go back home.”
A 2021 study by the World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization records that 7.45 lakh people died in 2016 from stroke and ischemic heart disease as a result of having routinely worked 55 hours a week. Psychologist Dr Harshant Upadhyaya, founder of Mumbai-based counselling centre Way to Hope, says the phenomenon is widespread. “The anxiety that stems from continuous effort to perform or achieve targets or remain at a certain level, pushes people towards perfectionist tendencies,” she says. “This continuous mental stress impacts people more than other triggers. It deprives individuals of the essential downtime needed for mental and emotional recharge.”
As workers smile though it all, the poster-child for this phenomenon is fighting back. The kind, polite Japanese, are known globally for their gaman (roughly translated as “perseverance”, “patience”, or “tolerance”). Add that to their idea of karoshi or “death from overwork” and it’s easy to see how toxic resilience can topple a nation. Since the early 1970s, men working up to 70 hours a week have dropped dead from bodily failure or have ended their lives from the pressure to play the model employee. Half of Japan’s workers don’t use their paid leave, prompting a 2018 bill forcing companies to get them to. The government is only now acknowledging that the stress has social repercussions too – families bear the cost of an absent or tired father, young folks delay marriage because they simply have no time for love. Japan’s 2022 birthrate is at its lowest in 17 years.
There are SubReddits devoted to Filipino Resiliency, a term used when victims of hurricanes are idolised for overcoming hardship without outside help, and why no one wants the next generation to endure it. In South Korea, which used to have 68-hour workweeks, a 2018 amendment capped the week at 52 hours. In June, there was a proposal to raise it back. It was rejected.
Dr Upadhyaya says that working 40 to 50 hours a week, as prescribed by most labour codes, allows for sufficient downtime and a life outside the office. “The ideal number varies based on individual needs, job demands, and industry norms,” she says. Indian offices, however, tend to glorify personal sacrifice. We shame colleagues for leaving on time, for not responding to 9pm texts, for unplugging on the weekend, and for taking earned time off. The more we grin and bear it, the less things change.
Ms Spears, incidentally, has another song, one in which she talks about wanting to be liberated, to feel independent. For anyone fed up of enduring, the title will seem familiar: I’m a Slave 4 U.
