Yiyuan Zhang
/3 min read

On Loneliness

Surprisingly, the first thing I want to write about in my blog is loneliness. Since I started working on my startup full-time, this is the feeling that has been creeping in the most.

There are many emotions I don’t quite know how to share with other people. The frustration of being ghosted by a potential customer, or the excitement of landing our first pilot (even if they’re only paying us $5K).

Some days feel like living on a roller coaster. But when I say that to my friends, I don’t think they truly understand. I don’t blame them for that. Before becoming a founder, when my founder friends said the same thing to me, I didn’t really understand either.

In general, I actually enjoy spending time alone. I’m someone who can spend quality time with myself without feeling lonely (maybe except for Friday nights). But the moments when I feel the most lonely are not when I’m alone. They’re when I’m with the people I love most, yet they don’t fully understand what I’m trying to say.

I think this problem is two-fold:

  1. This is a tendency of mine that I’ve only recently realized — I seek validation of my feelings from other people.
  2. Thinking that loneliness itself is a problem.

Recently, I came across two ideas that resonated with this feeling.

  • Eileen Gu, the American-Chinese freestyle skier with the most Olympic medals in freestyle skiing, said: “Most people only understand ordinary. Only number one understands number one.”
  • Alain de Botton said in an interview with Chris Williamson:
    “If you have a very sophisticated diet, there are few places where you can get the food you need. There is a version of this around sociability.”

I’m not saying I’m number one, or somehow superior to the people around me. But I do think people are very multifaceted, and no one can understand 100% of another person.

Maybe person A understands 80% of me, and person B understands the other 20%.

So my conclusion to this problem (for now):

  1. Realizing that everyone has their own unique feelings and thoughts. Once I accepted that, I started to feel better. There’s nothing wrong with not being fully understood.
  2. Loneliness is also a feeling that’s okay to have. Maybe it’s a sign that you’re onto something unique. In fact, I might feel worse if I were 100% understood by everyone.