Between Palms and Pipelines: Reflections of a Developer from a Tropical Village

#lifestyle #softwaredevelopment #hustle #programming

"They'll never miss the coconut tree if they never sat under one."

I didn’t grow up with hustle culture. I grew up with monsoons, mango trees, and the rhythm of the ocean. I come from a small Sri Lankan village where people still rise with the sun, rest when it's hot, and greet each other without the mediation of a calendar invite.

Then I became a software developer.

And somewhere between build pipelines and burnout, I realized I was living in two realities: the world I came from, and the world I work in.

This article isn’t about quitting tech and going off-grid. I love what I do. But it's about what happens when a person from a slower, wiser, more present world tries to survive in systems built on anxiety, acceleration, and abstraction.

The Split-Screen Life

Most of my colleagues live in cities built for productivity. I live in a place built for being. And that creates a strange sort of double vision.

My culture told me: Flow with nature.
My industry tells me: Outperform the sprint.
My village taught me: Your value is in your relationships.
My metrics say: Your value is in your commits.

It's like trying to code in one tab while another tab keeps showing you a sunset and asking: Are you sure this is what matters?

Watts, Spinoza, and Tropical Wisdom

It was only much later that I found thinkers like Alan Watts and Spinoza, who echoed what my ancestors knew without ever naming it:

You are not separate from nature.
The ego is an illusion.
There’s peace in letting go, not in striving harder.

In my village, these weren’t radical ideas. They were baked into daily life:

Fishing when the sea allowed it.
Resting when it rained.
Sharing what you have because someone else might need it more.

Where Spinoza spoke of God or Nature, and Watts of the self as illusion, my elders simply said: "Don’t fight the river. Just swim with it."

The Cost of Adapting

As I got deeper into tech, I adapted to its culture — fast standups, tight deadlines, the dopamine rush of shipping features. But I also watched something erode:

My attention got chopped into JIRA tickets.
My worth became entangled with productivity.
My stillness began to feel like laziness.

The younger ones in my village now grow up with smartphones, not stories. They know hustle memes better than harvest rhythms. And the saddest part? They won’t even know what they lost.

"They’ll never miss the coconut tree if they never sat under one."

The Perspective is Heavy

Carrying both worlds — the clarity of old ways and the complexity of new ones — is a burden. I see too much:

The wisdom we’re trading for efficiency.
The silence we’re filling with notifications.
The wholeness we once had, now sliced into data points.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m being too dramatic. Then I open Slack and see someone proudly working through burnout. Then I look outside and see a neighbor napping in a hammock, utterly at peace.

No, I’m not being dramatic. I’m just awake in a system that rewards sleepwalking.

So What Now?

I'm not leaving tech. But I’m also not leaving myself.

I take breaks without guilt.
I protect slow mornings.
I build systems, but I no longer serve them.

And maybe, just maybe, I’ll leave behind a few notes for the younger ones — a breadcrumb trail back to stillness, for when the algorithm inevitably breaks their hearts.

Because tropical wisdom doesn’t need to die. It just needs someone to remember.

Thanks for reading. If this resonated with you, share it with someone who needs to slow down, step outside, or just breathe.