Weekly review (2024-03-03)

It’s been quite a hectic week, full of many events.

I was recalling my memory. I had a chance to talk with someone who is going to leave a company that he co-founded. The main reason was that the founder was in serious mental trouble, probably bipolar disorder, and ended up exploiting everyone in the organization. The founder is my friend. I tried my best (to the extent that an entrepreneur who is busy with his job can do) to support him, because I knew where he was coming from – he had gone through all the hard things since he was born and I believed that the society that I want to see is where someone like him becomes successful. However, I was not able to stop him from collapsing, and as a result, I didn’t have a choice other than cutting the tie at least in a business relationship.

I was devastated. In the last year, there were similar cases where I wasn’t able to help others. Perhaps I made things even worse. My confidence was gone. I thought I had played a good role in altering other people’s futures for the better such as my experience with kids under alternative care, but I thought I was just overconfident.

I have kept thinking about it. How do I make out of the experience.

Recently, I came to two conclusions. First, it is a wrong idea that one can save the others. I might have provided some support to others in some ways, but it’s them who worked hard and saved themselves. It coincided with a novel that I read recently - it is about a fictional story of the best doctor of that time, who kept saying that doctors cannot cure patients but just can help them get better by themselves.

Second, I realized that the same thing happened before, the experience that shuttered my confidence. When I was a high school student, as the student committee chair, I initiated an action to abolish the thuggish tradition of my high school, which lasted more than decades, such as the seniors collecting money from the juniors (yes, it is a crime). It was my first turnaround experience, and still the hardest until today, given my capability and the situation. Without this experience, I would not have been a social entrepreneur.

The experience gave me the confidence that I could change society, but it was gone after a year. When I was a college student, I failed to change just one roommate’s idea. He head-butted me, broke my tooth, and dropped out of the college. I was an ambitious young boy who thought he could change even the world but failed even one person’s thought.

After this incident, I kept thinking about it for several years or so and realized that one cannot change the others, though one might nudge the others’ ideas. (By the way, the roommate came to see me several years later, apologizing for his action)

Now I see a pattern. First, I become overconfident from one experience and then later get hit hard by the other experience. Second, the hardship does adjust my confidence level but does not fundamentally alter my belief.

It is one of my core values that I wish to make a positive impact on others. Sometimes I don’t succeed, but I don’t need to change my belief because of the results. Even if I am in a situation where there is nothing that I can do, there still is something that I can do. I can keep watching and praying.

Ok, I was thinking of the events that happened during the week, but now I spent 30 minutes that I assigned to this weekly review. I am so sleepy after a red-eye flight, so let me stop here today.