Life is meant to be:
- Fulfilling: What brings fulfillment changes as we change. What’s important is to feel pulled towards what’s next, and when we stop feeling that pull, to search for it again.
- Shared with others: While new people bring new perspectives, old connections let you build on shared experiences and understand them, and experience, in depth.
- An adventure: Satisfaction and contentment often happens knowing what we did in the past. It’s worth being daring, to wander, and to struggle, because we smile fondly on these times.
- Uncompromising: Time and attention is finite, so if I don’t feel strongly about something, I shouldn’t worry about it. On the other hand, accepting what you can’t change.
- Balanced: Family, friends, work, and health. Like a table with four legs, to achieve stability and harmony, I need all four to do well than prioritizing just one or two.
In a quote:
“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better; whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you lived. This is to have succeeded.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Work is meant to be:
- Sustaining: It provides for physiological and safety needs in Maslow’s motivation model. Until some point, it met some esteem needs due to my feeling imposter syndrome.
- An opportunity to thrive: Work is the easiest avenue to pursue cognitive and self-actualization. It’d be much tougher to do this outside of work since you’d have to balance work, family, friends, health, and do this on the side.
- Enthralling and impactful: My best work is done when I’m captivated with what I’m working on, can rely on my expertise, and find it worth doing. This is much preferred to work relying only on my discipline.
- On money: It’s less important for me. I’m privileged, and fortunate enough, to have the skillset to live a good life even if I don’t succeed at a startup. I’d be delighted to build infrastructure that has tremendous public benefit even if I’m not able to financially capture much of it for myself.
- Hard: When I’m outside of my comfort zone, that’s when I know I’m learning and growing.
In a quote -
You only get a few shots at building your life’s work—the kind of work that makes a difference, that can’t happen without you. - South Park Commons