A few years ago, i was on a trip to the hinterlands to receive a gift from an old friend. The gift was an all white, purebred male Lhasa Apso pup, and its mother had just given birth to a litter of puppies, six in total.
I was happy to receive the puppy, so i went with a giant carton and some warm blankets. After collecting the pup, i entered a mini coach and headed home.
I got on and paid for two seats and sat down. As the journey began, i overheard two people at the backseat whispering about the little pup. I was amused at first, but then one of them said in our native pidgin english: "Maybe na hin hustle". I was surprised, so i turned and said to them: "It's a gift actually, i dont sell puppies". They nodded in agreement, and we had a smooth sailing trip.
I got home and my neighbour asked me again in pidgin english: "Oga, how the hustle dey? Because me i noe say you be hustler" I responded: "We just dey hustle dey go, na small, small".
After the long days events, i decided to build a small kernel for the pup, whom i had christened with the name Shelby. As i rummaged through my toolbox for some nails, i kept thinking about the word "hustle" and how we used the word and how we all understood its usage in our local parlance.
But i was curious, so i had to really find out the meaning of the word "hustle" and its other forms "hustler". I was shocked at its core meanings.
To Hustle means: to push roughly; to jostle. It also means to obtain money by fraud and deception. I went further and checked hustler. A hustler: is someone who knows how to get money from others, selling drugs, rolling dice, etc. in an aggressive way.
Other dictionary meanings are "Pimp","Gigolo" "Prostitute", and “Petty-Thief", etc. I was mind blown. So i had been using a word i didn't really understand, and not just me, many others were doing the same.
Hence, we regularly hear phrases like - "I just came back from hustling", "She went to go and hustle", and "He/She is a real Hustler".
It is highly comical that daily, many Nigerians (including myself) have expressively used these derogatory words wrongly to describe themselves in their bid to portray their positive virtues of diligence and hard work.
So if you are not a "Thief", "a Con", "a Prostitute" or " a Gigolo", then stop calling yourself a "Hustler" or describing your livelihood as "Hustling".
I decided that in that moment i would be an achiever instead of a hustler.
An achiever is a person or worker who reaches and attains certain goals set for him or herself. Now, it may be difficult to switch from saying "hustler" to "achiever", but it sure beats saying a wrong thing for the sake of looking cool or feeling cool amongst your peers.
Notice i also said "worker". It means that this definition is most suitable for those who are actual achievers and who are diligent at their honest jobs, be they be entrepreneurs, soldiers, welders, artisans, teachers, software engineers, businessmen, etc.
Not shady characters, or folks carrying out nefarious activities. So, become an achiever, and be worth your work, and the sky will be your beginning.
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