Founder dad’s paradoxes
Living with contradictory emotions and feelings
I first felt a cognitive dissonance at my ahma’s (Chinese for grandmother) wake. Like everyone there, I was sad. I thought about my ahma and the times we spent together, even the simple times when she gave me a piece of duck drumstick in the kitchen before anyone else got to eat because she knew I loved it. Then I smiled.
But I quickly stopped myself.
I was supposed to mourn for my ahma. Everyone at the wake was visibly sad. How could I be happy? What if someone saw me smiling?
Of course, that was okay. It is okay to be both happy and sad at the same time. But I didn’t learn that until I was much older.
I said goodbye and logged out of Slack. I had just quit my well-paying job to found a startup with my high school friend. The next few years, up to now, have been filled with cognitive dissonance.
We have been enjoying the freedom to choose what we want to work on or not work on. But we also have to pay the bills. While we loved working on Dashibase, nobody wanted to pay for it. Passion met practicality. Freedom met responsibility.
When we built Pebblely, we believed that AI images could be used for more valuable purposes than entertainment. But honestly, despite our belief, we had no idea how useful people would find it. When we launched, I asked if we could hit $200 in the first month. We achieved that in a day. Were we astute or clueless? Probably both.
Recently, we have been exploring the healthcare space. We dreamed up big, ambitious visions. How insurance should make us all live longer and healthier. How technologies like AI can assist patients and caregivers better. But we are also thinking about the smallest possible step we can take immediately to move us closer to these visions. 10,000-foot view and being in the weeds at the same time.
Sometimes I sit alone at home feeling unemployed but also thinking, “I have the best job in the world!”
My son stretched out his hand to me. I had always held his hand. But, this time, I chose not to. He should learn to walk on his own.
I want my son to feel loved and supported. I rock him to sleep, respond quickly to his cries, and carry him when he wants me to. But I also need to let go and let him figure things out himself. When he was born, we didn’t make him practice tummy time because we didn’t want him to cry. Ironically, our love left him unable to lift his own head. Oh, the struggle of not wanting to let him cry while also knowing I need to let him cry and try.1
I often look forward to the end of the day so that I can finally sit down and catch my breath. No more running around; no more washing of milk bottles. But in a blink of an eye, my son turned one and I wondered if I actually made the days count. Days are long, years are short. We want time to speed up but we also want time to slow down.
Growing up, I resented my parents for working long hours and not spending enough time with me. In fact, spending time together usually meant sweeping the floor at their shop during my school holidays. Only later in life did I learn to appreciate how hard they worked to give me the life I enjoyed growing up. And how they taught me to work hard for what I want by role-modelling it day in, day out. But I still wish they had spent more time with me. Now that I’m in their shoes, as a founder dad, I think I finally understand their dilemma: wanting to work hard to provide for the family but also wanting to spend as much time with me as possible.
Neither is the right answer. But both are.
Our paediatrician told us about an interesting case of an 18-month-old girl who couldn’t even flip over herself. She didn’t have any neurological issues. A neurologist checked. The cause was that her parents gave her everything whenever she made a sound. She never got the chance to learn to do things herself. Once her parents stopped helping her, she quickly learned to roll, crawl, and walk.