on hustle, time, and Black bodies in motion
On one side of TSA, people line up to leave.
On the other, people line up to work.
I didn’t notice it at first.
An ex-coworker did.
We work at the airport. He said if you really look — not glance, not skim — most of the Black people are moving in one direction. Toward time clocks. Toward uniforms. Toward labor that already knows their name.
On the other side, vacation moves differently.
No rush. No badge. No urgency to be useful.
He said he put his head down when he saw it.
Not out of shame.
Out of recognition.
Because once you see a pattern that clean, that old, it feels violent to keep staring.
He told me he’d be 31 this year.
He said someone was telling him the same thing when he was my age.
keep going.
stay focused.
do what you need to do.
because it doesn’t stop.
He said one day you look up and you’re 28, remembering your 21st birthday like it was yesterday — like time collapsed without asking your permission.
Standing there, between departures and arrivals, I realized how fast hustle eats years.
How survival turns into routine.
How easily Black bodies get trapped moving forward without ever arriving.
Airports teach hierarchy without ever announcing it.
They train bodies where to stand, when to move, who waits, who passes through. Some of us are paid to keep the doors open. Others get to walk through them.
We talked about education after that.
I said that’s why learning something — anything — matters. Because hustle without leverage just keeps you circulating the same terminals. Same gates. Same promises of “one day.”
But he said it’s deeper now.
Degrees aren’t enough.
It’s certificates. Positioning. Climbing as close to the top layer as possible.
Not because we love hustle —
but because rest is rationed.
They keep saying everyone needs five side hustles.
They never say who that “everyone” really is.
They never say whose exhaustion is assumed.
The airport makes it visible in a way nothing else does.
Black bodies keeping movement alive.
Black bodies holding up systems we’re rarely allowed to rest inside of.
Black bodies essential to everybody’s freedom but our own.
We have always been good at surviving systems that don’t love us.
We have always been told that if we just work harder, smarter, quieter, we’ll eventually cross over.
But standing there, watching who gets to disappear and who gets called essential, I felt the lie press against my chest.
We are not tired because we lack ambition.
We are tired because the world expects our hustle to be endless.
And I need us to talk about that.
Not softly.
Not politely.
I’m tired of watching us lower our heads just to survive the sight of it.
I want us on the other side of TSA.
Not as workers.
Not as helpers.
Not as the reason the system functions.
But as people who get to leave too.
He said he put his head down when he saw it.
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