There is a very real sense in which working in mathematics can be suffering. I feel like any research mathematician sooner or later has that feeling. Because yo

There is a very real sense in which working in mathematics can be suffering. I feel like any research mathematician sooner or later has that feeling. Because you will be confronted with your limitations and weaknesses eventually. So I think this a shared experience that is the implicitly understood background of his answer. What I took away from Thurstons answer was a way to deal with that suffering. I eventually decided that I did not really want to continue in a research mathematics direction, but for a while his answer really inspired me.