Humanizing the Founder Journey
I’m a mostly positive person, but as a startup founder, there have certainly been some difficult and frustrating times.
No matter what we seek on our journey, there are rough patches. Sometimes it just feels awful — for an hour, a day, a week, or a year.
I wrote this piece spur-of-the-moment to capture what it feels like to hit an inevitable bump on the business road. It’s not my norm, as I am blessed in so many ways and have been able to bounce back quickly from the lows with the support of those around me.
But I want to share it with you to humanize this beautiful journey — all of it.
Love,
Pranam
Despair, shame, embarrassment, guilt. These are the four walls that I feel.
I feel them with my soul, with my mind, and with my heart. These walls have enclosed me in a chamber for most of my life. They’ve given my ego absolute power to prey on my weaknesses, slicing them into wounds where self-doubt can fester. I’ve listened to them, as though they were real. I’ve bumped into them, feeling as if I was locked inside of a windowless warehouse tumbling under into the ocean.
There is no better place to be than feeling the closeness of these four walls. They have come to lull me into thinking I must stay at bay, I must stay within the walls. They say, thank you for bumping into us again, dear friend, but please stay inside, you can’t go beyond here.
I stop and stare. I don’t run like I used to. The walls that I feel and see don’t force me into a dark closet of more walls anymore. I don’t seek the closest shelter, I seek the closest dawn, the closest horizon.
I have grown up within these four walls. I have recognized them through other failures and challenges, and although they sometimes take different forms, they always envelop me. I have felt many times as if I was handcuffed to the radiators along each wall, so that my body can’t move and my soul slowly dies.
Enter a new state of soul. Enter my embrace.
I look around into each wall’s eyes. I’d never seen them before. I’d never looked into these walls’ souls. Now I see them. They are as scared as a little child, as lonely and sad as a castoff. Their eyes are bloodshot, as if they had been wandering relentlessly for months without food or water, voraciously trying to find solace in my despair. That is their food. They steal my own peace by feasting on my ego, which has up to this point satisfied them. And now they smell blood.
But gazing carefully into their souls, I feel their sorrow. I understand who they really are, and how they are really meant to serve me. I feel the quiet plea for me to free them. Please, they whimper. They feel used, abused, forgotten, and left for dead.
As do I.
I smile, slowly. I embrace their pain. We are here not to run from each other. We are here to heal each other. We were meant as a gift to one another. We are the keys to the other’s shackles.
In this moment, I feel all of their pain, and in that, mine. I see all of their past horrors, and in that, mine. I feel all of their disgust with themselves, and in that, mine.
Our eyes are locked, unmoving. Our souls are about to shake hands, though trembling. We are scared, we are embarrassed, we are guilty, we are despondent, we are ashamed.
But we are one. As I walk into the walls slowly, and press my hands on them, time slows down. Here I am at the edge of my life. The edge of my current existence. This is where I need to be. The walls begin to turn to glass, with a hint of emerald green flowing upwards through them. They are going from ice cold to slightly warmer, a sensation of the soul when it sees an old friend.
We embrace in this place. This is the brackish water. This is where salt turns into fresh.
The more I press, the more they begin to move. They are putting on a show now. I can see the rising dawn behind them. The walls around begin to slowly fall, as if they are melting into doors of dominoes. In concert, all around me, they give thanks, a chorus of low tones building upon each other to create a deep, warm timbre. They begin to open, and fall backwards as if they as they stepped off a cliff. Down they move, all smiling, in freedom. I am freeing them from their past, from their weary journey, from their pain.
As they hit the ground, they don’t crash loudly, but softly, as if they were meant to be there. I now look up into the new horizon.
Where is despair, where is shame, where is guilt, where is embarrassment? They have served me as they should. They have done their deed, and now they are freed. We are freed.
This is the beauty of walls. They are our saving grace, yet our locked prison. They, like our worst pains, lead us into a new realm of understanding, of beauty, of freedom. It is by facing them — with open minds and fearless hearts — that we are allowed to receive their gifts.
When their souls have truly met ours, we are given peace. We are given newness, and courage, and truth. And above all, we are given self-love.
The closets that we hid in to escape our walls are no more. All the darkness that we lived inside of is now light. We are illuminated. We can see beyond, into places we never thought possible. Into far and wide, but also into the dark corners within. Light beams into every shuttered down corner of our souls.
The beyond contains our freedom, much like our walls contained our pain. In the distance, on the edge of the horizon, more walls await. Like dominoes. Or, perhaps, more like signposts on the road forward. The path beyond will always be lit by our love. As we embrace our walls they become doorways to our true selves, our core, our fulfillment, and the infinite beyond.
Feel free to comment with any thoughts; I’d love to hear from you.
Follow Advo on: Medium | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
Embracing these walls is not an all or nothing event, either. Read about another Advo member’s search for balance:
