“This too shall pass” and other 33rd birthday reflections
Chasing rainbow in Quy Nhon
I’m 33 now!
Every year on my birthday, I try to take a moment to reflect on the past year and ponder on what’s next. It’s my own personal therapy through words. On July 28th this year, I jotted down a few notes on paper, and the rest are from notes I’ve written down on my Notes app (favorite app across all apple devices for sure!) roughly over the past 12 months.
You can view my past birthday reflections here. For shorter, less refined but more frequent notes, you can check out my occasional musings on Instagram stories, which are also kept in this thought bubble 💭 highlight on Facebook, under “profile feature”.
Without further ado, here’s this year edition. Enjoy!
On running a company, and entrepreneurship
Over 90% of startups fail. I think people conveniently ignore this stat because the few that do survive, survive big. They are the Ubers, the Netflix-s, the Tinders of the world. They are household names and their founders/management become superstars. What you don’t hear about is the people, the companies, and the products that never make it. So the survivorship bias sustains.
Survivorship Bias
I’m here to tell you know, first hand, that running your own company is not for the faint of hearts. I definitely wouldn’t recommend it unless you have a superb support system, and a very specific trait I’ll mention later. Sure, the upsides are tremendous. For me, it’s time with my kids, freedom to be me, and so much growth - in other words, a life I personally deem worth living. But so are the downsides. Running a company takes all of you, and then some. You might feel exhausted, underpaid, overworked, stretched too thin. You somehow feel like you are always on the wrong side of the market. Or taken advantage of. Or both. You feel the weight of disappointment over unrealistic expectations and disloyalty. You take 1 step forward, 2 steps back. All you want to focus on is the product, the content, the “meat” of the whole operation. But somehow, you find yourself first and foremost having to manage people, and their baggage, half of the time. And worst of all, you have no one else to blame but yourself.
But I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’ve done this for 6 years now. I’m in too deep. I recently listened to a talk by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman about the one common denominator that unites all entrepreneurs. That is, their stubbornness to keep the thing going despite evidence pointing to the contrary. Some might even call it delusion lol. And I couldn’t agree more.
Fortunately, or unfortunately- depends on how you look at it, both David and I are that kind of people, with that specific trait. We will keep this thing going, no matter what, purely for our determination to keep it going. That’s why my answer to anyone who ever asked me the question “what it’s like to work with your own spouse?” has always been “he’s the only person on earth who can actually empathize with me and my pains, almost 100%.” People do have to be just slightly delusional to run a company for this long (6 years for me, and going on 11 years for David, gosh).
On wealth
As we play our cards well/better in life, we move up in wealth. David and I certainly did, in the 8 years that we’ve been together. The stats might change, but the struggle remains the same: finding that perfect balance between ambition and contentment. Without the former, you stay complacent. One misstep, a slide, you can then free fall. But, and this is a very important but, without the latter, you will never, ever feel enough.
I wrote these exact thoughts on “money cannot buy happiness” ironically while staying at the most beautiful resort I’ve ever been to in my life in Vietnam this summer, and it goes like this:
Tale as old as time: Money cannot buy happiness
I think the fact that these billionaires are on a constant thrill chasing quest goes beyond vanity and the need for validation. Simply put, their happiness plateaus long before their wealth. So, they crave doing something, anything, to just feel some sorts of ways again.
So, whatever wealth bracket or financial situation you are in, I have one simple wisdom to offer you: if you are not happy right now with your current wealth, you will unfortunately still remain unhappy even if you are 10 or 100 times wealthier. Money can only solve money problems. It won’t solve problems regarding self-worth, relationships, or lack of general life purpose.
On being 33, and time
Me at 23. Translation: me at 23, no love, no job, no school. But confident, happy, and free.
Now that I’m a decade older than the me in that picture, I could say this with absolute certainty: 33 is 100% better than 23. At 23, I was schoolless, jobless, childless, moneyless :) But if you had asked me then to imagine being 33, I wouldn’t have liked that idea, or thought of it to be such a wonderful age. Ignorance (especially that of youth) is such bliss. I’m sure 43 would be wonderful when it comes, but right now I can’t fathom the thought of being in my 40s with a teenage daughter and a preteen son! How wild.
Speaking of the passage of time. How wonderful it is to have time. To not feel rushed. To not have to compromise on priorities. As I grow older, I realize that people can chase after many things (money, material stuff, power & influence, admiration from a desired audience, etc..) but at the core, they chase “time”. Time to do all the things their hearts desire. Time to live forever. Time to last long enough so you can finally “make things right”.
Yet, that’s the one true thing we simultaneously don’t have and all have. If you look around, without any colored glasses, time is the only true thing on your side. But if you lose sight of it, time slips away in an instant, leaving you astray chasing it around like a dog running after its own tail.
Make each moment count. At the end of the day, it’s your only, longest standing, true friend.
(Side note: there is a very good book on this very subject called “Bittersweet” by Susan Cain that I’ve been recommending to basically anyone who would give me their time of day this year. She previously wrote the book “Quiet: the power of introverts” that made me realize just how much of an introvert I am. Then she came back after years of hiatus with this banger. Highly recommend)
This too shall pass
I used to bike home at midnight with my best friend from college, from a coffee shop 5 miles away from our dorm. Providence fall/winter could be quite brutal, made worse by the scary darkness of deserted campus streets at night. So we would repeat this chant to ourselves “this too shall pass. this too shall pass”, just so we could be brave enough to bike all the way home.
Over the years, I’ve repeated versions of this chant to myself in countless situations where I feel stuck, devastated, or even hopeless. “Shit could be worse” is my other favorite motto. And it works like a charm, works for my 8-month long insomnia, my devastating first break up, or disappointment over the many negative pregnancy tests back in 2020.
Somehow, I’ve always managed to wait just long enough for that rain to pass and the sun to shine again, and even for the rainbows to appear if I’m lucky.
But this year, I’ve realized yet another meaning of “this too shall pass”. That is, the good stuff too, shall pass.
My daughter Norah is 6 years old now, and my son Ira is 1 and a quarter (!) Looking at Ira is like looking at what we’ve no longer had with Norah, and looking at Norah is like looking at a portal into Ira’s future. (Mainly, because they look eerily similar) It’s surreal, liminal, even a little scary. With each milestones passing, we realize that we will never be able to gain them back again. Norah will only ever lose her first tooth once. Ira will never go back to crawling exclusively. There was a last time that I could carry Norah on one side of my hips. Ira has already outgrown his baby bassinet and we will likely retire the thing for good (unless, you know, 3rd baby comes)
I told Norah: “you are not allowed to grow up anymore” on her 6th birthday. She asked “why??” And I realized how ridiculous that is. That’s the cruelty of time. It will never stop. The bad shall pass. But so will the good. Everything is impermanent, and transient. So appreciate them all while you can.
One of these days will be the last time I read them both a book
On letting go
“Sống trong đời sống, cần có một tấm lòng
Để làm gì, em biết không?
Để gió cuốn đi.”
In one of our rare hours-long talks at 2am one day, I translated for David this verse from a very iconic Vietnamese classic by Trinh Cong Son. It goes like this:
“To live in life, you need a kindness
To do what, do you know?
So that the wind can take it away.”
To me, that’s the ultimate freedom (that i’ve yet to achieve). Yes, you build a house. A family. A company. An empire even. But until and unless you accept the ultimate truth that one day the wind will take it all away, you will never truly be free.
(Another side note: to comprehend this, highly recommend watching The Good Place, especially the last season. It’s a masterpiece in all ways)
Miscellaneous other notes
Those are basically all my more “philosophical” thoughts this past year. I’ll end with a few lighter, more practical ones:
Watch what someone does instead of what they say. It’s a much better indicator of future outcomes
Be direct. That is, if you want something, say exactly what you want like how it appears in your head. Don’t try to dance around the topic. I tried a new thing this year wherein if I think in my head someone is beautiful, has a good outfit that day, or is kind, I will just go ahead and tell them. It makes everyone’s day better. Similarly, when somebody messes up, I no longer try to “protect” their feeling by saying it anything rather than what it is. It might hurt in the moment, but everyone is better off afterwards.
Don’t let perfection be enemy of the good. You will never be perfectly “done”. Be okay with good enough.
Until next year (!), hopefully I’ll write more in the next 12 months than I did the last 12 months. Can’t believe my last blog post on this site was over a year ago.
