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I think everyone has had that moment when they think "no one knows this pain." It's easy to lose perspective when everything - from a relative perspective - loo
by m0th87 14y ago
I think everyone has had that moment when they think "no one knows this pain." It's easy to lose perspective when everything - from a relative perspective - looks like it's collapsing.
One could similarly make the argument that a factory worker in the midwest should get some perspective and see how bad the kids with swollen stomachs and vultures overhead have it. Obviously that's not fair.
This is a person who committed a couple of years, a good chunk of capital, and a good relationship for an idea. And on top of that, they gambled their pride - to try so hard and still fail is a defeating feeling. Especially when people around you are succeeding at the same game.
Admittedly this is all presumptuous, but that's the point. For all we know this could be a work of fiction. Or the author might have struggled through all of this and then some. It seems similarly presumptuous too to conclude that the author has a privileged perspective.
- tptacek 14y agoI think you have a better bead on it that I can do; it's about perspective. And, obviously: all I have to go on is what's actually written in this post. I have a feeling that people are going to project their own experiences into that post and read my response accordingly. I have no idea what you've been through; I just know what this person says they've dealt with. Please understand, though: it's not that someone is worse-off than this startup founder. There's always someone worse off. The unemployed factory worker is in a far better position than an impoverished rural Chinese farmer. It's that most people are worse-off than the startup founder. Even most Americans.
- jordanb 14y ago> it's about perspective Is it fair to expect someone in his position to have perspective? I think if you ask him about the failure six months or a year later, a resilient person would be able to put it in perspective, but not while it's happening.
- tptacek 14y agoI don't know, because we're not talking about a specific person. But the entity that I know only from reading this article, the one sitting on a desk picking at his company's vanity sticker and thinking that nobody in the world can know how he feels, I think he could use a little perspective. It is exactly clear to me how unhappy this sentiment makes startup people on HN, and that's fine. I take no offense.
- koide 14y agoThe point is that this line of reasoning can be applied to whatever painful event suffered by anybody who's better than "most people" and especially gasp "most Americans." Where do you draw the line and why there and not elsewhere? What's "proper pain"? To be honest, I'm somewhat on your side and tend to take the "shut up and grow up already" mentality regarding people whining (suffering) about painful life events, but that view does not answer the above question reasonably, it just ends up denouncing whatever you personally cannot withstand or are annoyed with.
- aidenn0 14y agoIt's fine to have pain, but to say "nobody can understand this pain" when huge numbers of people are almost certainly worse off is hyperbole.
- koide 14y agoTrue. "Nobody can understand this pain" is either self evidently false (at the very least other indebted, divorced start up founders understand it and likely many other people who are worse off) or a tautology (everybody suffers differently and thus nobody can understand the pain of anybody else.) I personally don't get worked up about that kind of self commiserating sentences.