Came across this piece by Diana Nyad who swam from Florida to Cuba (full 53 miles) at the young age of 64.

I think nothing captures the struggle of an entrepreneur more beautifully than this note by her where she captured the ordeal of swimming for 15 hours. I think every entrepreneur will recognize this pattern where he struggles with short-term reality to achieve long-term dreams.

“Imagine swimming continually for fifteen hours. Fifteen hours in rough, cold ocean water. Fifteen hours of unconsciously doing the same stroke that you have been doing since you were 10 years old. You can’t hear because of the caps, and you can’t see because of the dark, fogged goggles. You can’t think because the human mind is not geared to focus for any lengthy period of time, so your thoughts drift into delirium, and soon, time is more distorted than ever. As far as you know, you are in the middle of nowhere, and any effort you might produce to stroke again won’t necessarily bring you any closer to your goal, because much of the time you can’t remember what the goal is. It is clear that your ordeal is without end, and there is only one thing you somehow sense — that the choice to abandon the struggle and climb aboard the ship would be to fragment your pride beyond repair. Survival is keeping one’s dignity intact.”

Source: The New York Times