Seven things I learned while running a startup, being a dad, a husband, and fighting stage 4 cancer.
Published in
9 min readJan 2, 2019
Warning. Plenty of cliches are ahead.
Early 2018 I was juggling between my roles as a manager in a company, leading a geospatial data start-up out of the company’s incubator and taking care of my family. At the height of the busyness, I felt a painless lump on the left side of my neck. Quick trip to a GP resulted an antibiotics to be finished in 5 days.
Fast forward couple of months, the lump was getting bigger and also several others had appeared at the right side of my neck, although still painless. My wife urged me to go the ENT and have it looked at. A doctor trip, a fine needle test, -a procedure where the doctor take some sample out of the bigger lump using, yea you guess it, a needle- and a tension filled discussion later, there I was, face to face with my own mortality.
The last nine months I picked up seven things that I find interesting and perhaps useful to be shared with others:
- Realizing that you have an expiry date made you focus on what and whom really matter. For me it’s family, my close circle of friends, the cause I believed in, my work team and business -slash extended family- partners. Getting this priority straight really helped me in sorting out most of matters. With finite resources and newly realized mortality, I had no other choices but to challenged every possible moves against my set of priorities.
- To build upon your cause, the one that you really cared for and believed in, suddenly becomes clearer. I was a bit shy about it, because I used to think that to be idealistic and to promote social good, to openly proclaim that you want to help your fellow men is just for those with too much of hot air in them, those who do that publicly were either after your vote, your money or both (unless you’re Tupac that is..”the elevation of today’s generation, if I could just make em to listen..). But upon learning the advance stage of the disease I was apparently at, by reading the med exam result, then and there I decided that I do believe in the cause after all. I believe that what we got going in our little start up is way bigger than ourselves. I am committed to be a part of a team, and building a great one. There’s the saying that goes, in order to run fast, you have to go at it alone, but to run far, you have to do it together. It became clearer that this is my personal truth, whether in running a big company, a startup or taking care a family. And to go somewhere that are meaningful, you really have to understand your role in the team, and it’s not always going to be the same from time to time, from one situation to another. There’s the ever-changing role of a leader, oscillating between moderator, cheerleader and tyrant, as circumstances dictate. But, there are time like this year, when my presence had been basically non existent, as I had to completely trust my team mates to pick up my slacks and carry me along. That’s probably related to number 2, whether the cause is bigger than yourself, that you wanted it to still go on, long after you’re gone, even when your name is forgotten.
- Being present; The bad habit of overthinking and the illusion of having solution to every possible situation was (and still is) one of my biggest weakness. But we all realize, that our best work is happening in the stillness of a quiet mind, no matter the surrounding. We have many names for it, zen, the zone, the flow, khusyuk, and others, but the point remains, one’s mind has to be present in the now. Having going through chemo every 2 weeks, with all its, too put it lightly, discomforting side effects, got me with no options but to embrace the moment. The chemotherapy cycle is such, so that when your body has somewhat recovered from previous treatment side effects, you have to undergo the next. It put such mental stress on you, so that it is very common that a patient might throw up even before the chemo drug is admitted (sadly, I was one of them). Anticipation of future pain and recall of past trauma caused you to suffer now, emphasis on the now. Such is the power of the mind has over the body. I carry that lesson in other aspects of my life. Often times, I worry about that marketing presentation for next Tuesday or lamenting the botch line in yesterday’s pitch meeting. These things take away focus from it most useful deployment, which is concentrating on the task at hand. It took a mental discipline to zeroing in on the current. Yes, from time to time mind will roam and wander off, but it could be reigned and steered back on course. Like any muscle, discipline is a mental muscle that for it to be stronger, it needs routine practice. To be mostly alert in the present gives me the calm I needed to go about my task, the best way I could possibly execute it. Realizing this fact will start virtuous cycle of worrying less and earning more positive results. That bring me to the next point I learned which is;
- Its always about the process. Perhaps this is the most important things that I could take from my recent experience. Those who are solely think about result have never faced impending death in the face before. Result is a function of many things, hard work, persistence, smarts, timing and luck. While the first three are self procured, timing and luck are well beyond our control. You could argue that one could read, listen and stay close to market in order to catch up with the current, hence timing up the market. Or reciting the old-the harder I work, the luckier I get- adage. But, to have the illusion that you are always on top of things, however comforting, are dangerous and makes you prone to nasty awakening (eg; 9/11, major market crashes, heavy casualties in natural disasters). Accepting that there are so many things that is beyond your control will keep you grounded and in my case, shed a new light on my overall approach to my work. More emphasis now are placed on the process cycle instead of worrying and stressing about the result (relating to being present). Result is an important component of the cycle, it provides a feedback and tells what went wrong or right at a given moment. But no result is final, as the cycle continue, new result will emerged. So on and so forth. Result is part of the ongoing process. As long as you put your heart into it. As long as you survive.
- The paradox of being kind. Not everyone you meet today (thankfully) facing a stage 4 cancer. But they probably are dealing with difficult and complex divorce process, or fighting an insurmountable amount of debt, or stuck in a hell of a marriage. By certain age you might finally realize that everybody is fighting a battle that is custom made for us, everyone with their own crosses to bear. Despite the support of closed ones, most of the fight were fought in series of lonely nights. Realizing this first hand makes me more in touch with plight of others. Most of the time, in dealing with someone who has misfortune in their life, all I can offer them is just a prayer or well wishes. But more often than not, a sincere “how are you” and ears to lent could touch someone’s life for the better, even just a little bit. But there’s something that I found quite interesting with this approach, as I honestly wishing someone well with their life, it is as if I’m soothing myself all the same. To me, it’s almost a paradox, the more I empathize with others, e.g. give my time and attention to other, the more I get in terms of feeling good about myself. It might be selfish to view kindness in this regard, as the aim is more to yourself. But the caveat is for this to work is only, and only if you give wholeheartedly.
- Being thankful. Out of all the positive emotion, this is I found to be the most impactful. During the early stage of my medication regiment, it was as if time slowing down, and I had all the time in the world to look at my life. I am grateful for that gift of reflection. Naturally, I cut back from most of work and outside activities hence had ample of opportunities to look back at many different roles in my life, as a husband, father, brother, son, employee, manager, founder and a friend. I reflected upon my action and reaction during some of the most important period of my life, such as when dealing with disappointment, success, challenges, conflict, anger, and happiness. Although I realized that memories are imperfect and inherently biased, I could recall the general sentiment during the periods, course of action that I took, and the reverberating consequences. Also came into mind were the people I cared for and their kindness, and those who took the time to reached out and genuinely gave their support. It became vividly apparent that some emotion and feelings were so powerful, so that it shaped my outlook toward life in general, for better and for worse. Realizing this made me able to consciously align myself toward the person I now believed I should be. It may not make sense to some of you (and my old self) as I write this, I am thankful for this experience, the sickness, the sadness, the hope and the eventual acceptance. No one expressed it better than Sayidina Ali, the son-in-law of Prophet Muhammad, as he said,”..Perhaps it’s the remedy that brought the sickness, and perhaps the sickness turned into a remedy. For the sickness might be the cure”. For the sickness might be the cure.
- To pay it forward. All these experience and thoughts that were welling up during my downtime was pushing up on me. I feel that I had taken so much from so many people near and far (some of them coming as far as United States, Hongkong, and New Zealand, as I live in Indonesia), some through conversations, their writings, their text messages, and others through their blogs and posts. I had no idea, until I experienced it myself, how desperate you can be to know that you’re not alone facing certain type of (dire) situation, in my case, Hodgkins Lymphoma. I googled for every symptoms, from skin itchiness, jaw pain, to every Latin words in my medical reports trying to decipher the diagnosis. Numerous times that I stumbled upon a good blog posts, that there were long hiatus during the publication dates, and finally the words and the posts stop coming altogether. Always seeing the glass half full, I expected that the authors had found their health and didn’t have time to write some more. But too often had I found through subsequent posts written by other that the author had passed away. But their story remains. It sits among the entries that Google (and in my case Duck Duck go) spewed out during the midnight searches for answers for many of us, that were scared and desperate to find consolation in the form of the words of others, with similar stories to tell. I lost count of how many that I had read. Through this post I thanked them all. I also found that other than writings and sharing sessions, actions and works could also be a medium for paying it forward. The essence of paying it forward is to not let the ball of kindness stop at you. The best of us leverage it through their crafts so that the desired positive effects multiplied and touch many others in their respective lives.
I am among the lucky ones. According to the after treatments CT Scan, they found no evidence of diseases in me. There are to be more tests, one in every six months to confirm the findings, and hopefully after five years of negative results, the doctor will declare the cure status. Of course that would mean that there would be some anxious and jittery moments at store for me in the future, especially prior to the periodical test.
But as of now, I feel that I’m riding a second wind. I know my set of priorities, I believe in my cause, am trying to be present at all possible moments, I put most of my attention on the process, to be kind, to be ever grateful, and will use all of my craft as a way to pay it forward.
New year, new sets of chances. Life as good at its gets.
