The Value of Saying I Don't Get It But I Get It

The title makes you wonder “what is this guy talking about?” but it’s something very important.

This is a phrase that came up the other day in a conversation with a friend.

It’s easy to picture if you imagine a founder who built a startup alone: sometimes these people are terribly lonely.

An experienced executive, or someone trying to build on the present on top of a stack of reflections on accumulated failures, is truly alone in that context.

Few people in the world try something again after a fairly big failure. Inevitably, then, successful people tend to include a lot of “people who have only ever known success.”

They’ve never seen the entrance to a painful failure.

They don’t know that inner conflict, or the feeling that almost makes you choke up.

Same company, same office, members working hard and eating from the same pot. Even if where they are now is the same, where they came from is different.

So it’s lonely, inevitably.

I have, in my own way, made failures that people who know me well would call “you really messed that up.” More than once.

This “failure” might just be wordplay, but it’s a bit different from what’s usually called a “mistake.” It’s not something done carelessly, nor an oversight from lack of experience. It’s encountering something you can’t choose even after anticipating the outcome, and failing while still following your own heart and convictions.

You’ve probably lost track of what I’m even talking about, haven’t you?

But a very few people will understand “completely” what this is about. So again, it is lonely.

I can say to them, “I don’t get it, but I get it.”

Fundamentally, no one else can understand another person’s inner conflict.

Some people can understand it technically, but the kind of consultation where someone technically understands your worries really just means “wanting to talk to someone to sort out your thoughts.” That kind of thing doesn’t make you cough up blood.

“Well, I can at least listen” is another common, warm-hearted line. But the relief of being listened to lasts only for that moment; it doesn’t resolve anything.

When you say the line “I don’t get it, but I get it,” you almost fully understand the content in reality. But presenting that understanding is a different matter. His inner conflict belongs only to him, and it’s on the foundation of that conclusion and result that he moves forward.

Originally published in Japanese at https://clazytech.com/2022/08/1285/. Translated with LLM assistance and reviewed before publication.