Gary Ong | August 1st, 2021

Every person carries with them a measure of suffering. For some, it is a wound from the past that has not healed. For others, it is a future they are hoping will never to come to pass. So, we all suffer in the present.

Every founder carries with him or her a measure of suffering. For some, it is a regret of starting the company at all, afraid that should things fail, they will hurt a lot of people along the way. For others, it is a fear that they were wrong about the future, and a market discovery or dataset is just paces away from arriving to kill the company. So, we hustle. So, we suffer.

Is there a way out? I wish there was. But there isn’t. We suffer because we are human. But, we can suffer less if we learn how to suffer better. Suffering better means we no longer cling to the idea that a life free of suffering exist. Rather, we choose to suffer for something we believe in, to dedicate that suffering to something greater. When we do, we transform suffering to passion: to care for something so deeply that we willingly suffer for it.