The mistranslation of Dukkha
The Buddha's first Noble Truth is that "life is suffering."
This concept is recited all over the wisdom traditions, as well as, retrofitted, in many contemporary thinkers like Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson.
When I first heard this, I thought it was unnecessarily gloomy.
Life's not ALL suffering. I'm generally happy. Everyone says I'm an optimist. Maybe I'm not ecstatic right now, but I'm definitely pretty good. And I was great last month, when I closed that financing. I might suffer sometimes, sure, but life is much more than just that.
I learned much later that the Buddha used the sanskrit word Dukkha, which actually translates to "unsatisfactoriness." So, in effect, the teaching is that life, by its very nature, is unsatisfactory.
Life is not enough. Ah, now we're getting somewhere.
Life is not enough, and cannot ever be enough, because we always want more. When we're sad, we want to be happy. When we're happy, we want to be over the moon. And when we're over the moon, we quickly become afraid of the inevitable come-down. Closing a financing, hitting revenue numbers or even selling your company, there is no situation in which human beings--never mind founders--can ever get enough, or experience enough, or accomplish enough. We're not wired for that.
The "be all that you can be" mantra we're taught in America feeds us right into this misery, amplifying our innate desire to want more, strive more, achieve more. Many of us are good at playing this game and trick ourselves into thinking we can win, amassing lots of things and experiences in the process. But no amount of getting, achieving or having will ever change life's fundamental not-enough-ness. The game is rigged.
Instead of killing ourselves trying to get enough (things or experiences, money or status), what if we worked on really seeing what's right in front of us? What if we got past ourselves, and really saw the people suffering around us, and in seeing that, simply endeavored to help?
For that matter, what would a company that did that look like?