Happy Birthday #33
Progress
“What is progress?”
The little boy and his question appeared out of nowhere. I looked at him, a bit surprised and a bit suspicious. He was probably seven.
“What is progress?” he repeated, leading me up the spiral ramp.
I told him progress is change. We walked a bit further, chatting, and he pointed to something on the wall. When I looked back, he was gone, replaced by a teenager with freckles. “How do you know when you’re in love?”
As I moved up the spiral, the teenager gave way to a young adult, then a matron, than an old man. We spoke about Marxism, toilets, Facebook, and death. After twenty minutes I arrived back at the beginning, changed but unchanged.
This was my experience at the Guggenheim in New York in 2010, at a work of interactive performance art by Tino Seghal called “This Progress.”
Dearest friends,
Today is my birthday, a year since the last one, and this lap around the calendar has felt a bit like that journey up the ramp: provocative, non-linear, surreal at times, a blur of people and places and conversations that have left me precisely where I started, changed but unchanged.
I did a lot this year. I loved and lost, fought and was forgiven; I hustled and sank, fled and returned. I tried to break free of myself and found only more me.
What is progress, anyway?
Progress is growth.
I spent the first six months of the year in San Francisco.
Cadence, the translation and interpretation company I’m a partner in, was accepted into 500 Startups, one of Silicon Valley’s top accelerators, and I joined the team full-time to help grow the business.
“Growth” is everything in Silicon Valley these days; it’s embedded in the discourse. Marketers aren’t called “marketers”; they’re called “growth hackers.” “Traction” is the sole proof of significance.
Wherever you go in the greater Bay Area, you are never more than sixty seconds away from hearing the word “scale.”
It is equal parts impressive and oppressive. Silicon Valley has created the most sophisticated system of product development and distribution that has ever existed in human economic history. But I genuinely suspect that a big portion of the tech milieu there has come to regard growth as an end unto itself; any social value created along the way merely serves as a supporting argument for more growth. But hey, that’s capitalism for you.
The growth mindset applies not only to the way businesses are run, but also to how lives are lived. Never have I seen a culture so obsessed with self-improvement, with “progress” so defined by the metrics of personal growth. Everywhere, lifestyles are curated; diets optimized; relationships engineered. Sleep, exercise, family time — each can be measured, managed, and grown. The only limiting factor is ourselves.
Well, I figured, if I’m going to be in Silicon Valley, I might as well drink the Kool-aid.
There are a lot of things I’ve always known I’m good at: telling stories, building trust, maintaining professionalism under pressure. And there are things I’ve always told myself were beyond me: logistics, analytics, process execution.
But there is a fair argument to be made that self-knowledge is actually a form of self-limitation: that by defining something, you restrict its growth. As someone who spends quite a bit of time pondering my own existence, perhaps I had pondered myself into a box? If I “know” that I’m good at this or bad at that, does that knowledge become a self-fulfilling prophecy?
I set out at the beginning of the year to escape that cycle — to see what I could be without any preconceptions of what I am.
In doing so I left behind many of the marks of my identity: my life in Beijing, my work as an interpreter, my travels and projects and indulgences. I threw myself into startup culture: the hustle, the hoodies, the endless box pizza, sprints, brogrammers, burn-rates, pitch books, VCs.
I took on unfamiliar roles and responsibilities (head of B2B sales for a few months); our team made tough decisions (we fired half our staff). We grew as a company, and we grew as individuals.
I was miserable for most of it, of course. You’re supposed to be, that’s the point. They’re called “growing pains” for a reason.
Expecting progress without pain is like expecting love without loss, or investment without risk. It’s just part of the package.
Progress is acceptance.
Okay, hold on a sec.
I love drinking Kool-aid as much as the next guy, but if you find yourself being told that pain is good and self-knowledge is bad, you should probably check your bases.
At 33 now, I’m proud to know myself well — my weaknesses as well as my strengths. Self-knowledge is a hard-won asset; and yes, it needs to be constantly re-examined and updated, but it also deserves to be cherished and respected.
And if there’s one thing I’ve found pretty reliably true about myself, it’s that I really do like being happy and I really don’t like pain — even at the cost of slower growth.
Those are not easy things to admit. Our culture generally equates leisure with laziness and vulnerability with failure. I happen to value my leisure and celebrate my vulnerability. I admire grit; but I’ll choose the path of least resistance every time.
So after a few months of deliberately placing myself in uncomfortable positions and trying new, difficult things, I eventually said “enough,” and promptly came back to Beijing and back into my element: jet-setting around, lots of conferences, still 100% dedicated to the startup but not to the grind. I’m interpreting, traveling, writing, speaking, and investing in projects, ventures, and events that I care about — and finding ways to tie that value back to our business.
Sure, the hard stuff helped me grow — and helped the company grow — but I think the biggest progress I’ve made between 32 and 33 is a renewed sense of self-acceptance, a tolerance for myself and my foibles, and a maturing confidence that it’s okay to not be growing constantly — that it’s okay to just be what we are, limitations and all.
Progress is transcendence
Real progress isn’t about growing as much as possible, and its not just about accepting that some things are not meant to be grown.
It’s about transcending the dichotomy itself.
You know the Serenity Prayer?
God, grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
the Courage to change the things I can;
and the Wisdom to know the difference.
I think internalizing that wisdom is the only progress that counts.
At the practical level, this helps us evaluate situations: could this relationship have ended differently? Can I improve my performance? How should I spend my time?
The simple recognition that there are some variables that can be manipulated and others that can’t is actually a pretty good starting point for answering any of those questions. Sometimes it’s best to optimize; sometimes it’s best to let go.
But on a metaphysical level, transcending the progress imperative may help alleviate a deeper angst.
My generation torments ourselves with the fear of missing out. Afforded more privilege than any previous era of human civilization, we are somehow hyper-focused not on our opportunities but on our opportunity cost.
Whatever we do or are, we are not doing or being something else. When we evolve, we lose our past. When we accept ourselves, we lose our potential.
This stresses me out, and I don’t think I’m the only one.
It’s not surprising, then, that mainstream popular culture has begun to embrace themes of non-linear time and reincarnation: think recent box-office hits like Arrival, Interstellar, and Edge of Tomorrow.
These narratives appeal to us because they offer an escape from opportunity cost. Transcending the finiteness of time — and by extension, mortality — makes “real progress” possible.
It’s a comforting thought. As I’ve pondered the concept of progress the past few days, it occurred to me that my mother — gone nearly 18 months now — really did achieve that transcendence. She loved who she was (excellent, but restless), she strove to make a difference in the world (broken, but beautiful), and she genuinely looked at death as a form of progress she could never achieve in life.
And all of us, in the meantime, the coders and poets, the billionaires and refugees, we slowly wind our way up the spiral ramp until finally we arrive where we began.
Once you’ve lived every human life throughout all time, you will have grown enough to be born. — The Egg, by Andy Weir
Alright, alright, enough of the koans.
Updates, plugs, and a final heart-to-heart:
All in all, life is good — in addition to all my existential progress, I also have plenty to eat and no one is shooting at me.
I miss Mom though. Whenever I’m struggling, I go for a walk or a run and look at the trees and remember that I’m made of her. I’m making progress grieving, but it’s never done.
On the home/mobility front, I’m enjoying being back in Beijing, but also looking forward to being back on the road again soon: the next twelve weeks will see me in Beijing — San Francisco — Washington DC — Guangzhou — Los Angeles — Toronto — London — Bagan — Andhra Pradesh — Beijing — Reykjavik, and who’s knows where we go from there. Holler if you’re on the route!
Interpreting is still lots of fun — the break I took in San Francisco has made returning to it all the sweeter. Recently I’ve been working with the founders of a lot of hot Chinese tech companies and cross-border investment funds, and I desperately want to share with the world how innovative China really is.
Over at Cadence, the business itself is going gang-busters; sales are going up, margins are going up, and the team and operations are getting stronger every day. If you know anyone that ever has any need for any kind of translation/interpretation/localization in any language, please make an introduction or have them check out our brand new website (which I helped design)!
As part of my portfolio with the business, I’m doing a lot of writing, speaking, events, and media. I was proud to be a partner and host of She Loves Tech, the largest women-in-tech startup competition in the world. Next week I’ll be lecturing at the Middlebury Institute in Monterey and presenting at the American Translators Association annual conference in DC.
I’m also proud to be a supporter and investor in two other startups making great progress here in Beijing: Hatchery, an F&B concept incubator, and Mantra, a social impact eyewear brand.
In fact, if you want to get me a gift for my birthday, please buy yourself a pair of Mantras and send me a selfie of you wearing them! And for every pair of hyper-stylish sunglasses you buy, Mantra donates a pair of prescription glasses to a student in rural Yunnan through their non-profit partner Education in Sight, so you’ll be helping me and yourself and a poor kid in rural China!
Also, as long as I’m asking for favors, please do consider sharing this letter with someone who might like it.
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Okay everyone — I’ve reconsidered. Real real progress is just making it this far down into an extraordinarily long birthday letter.
In this year, like in every year before, I have leaned on you all a tremendous amount, whether you know it or not.
It is you who makes me love myself for who I am. When I grow, you are my nutrition. When I accept myself, you are the peace that I find.
I cherish every one of you, and am proud to have been a part of your journey just as you have been a part of mine.
Write and tell me everything or nothing, I just love hearing your voice.
Truly yours in the meantime,
Jonathan
