The Unbearable Weight of Meaning
What's leadership when meaning has collapsed?
"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed."
— Ernest Hemingway
This weekend, meaning collapsed.
I intended to write a professional, creative piece. I had a topic and an outline.
But here I am. Bleeding.
I thought I had answers. I’ve traveled the world. I’ve seen cultures and crowds in search of meaning queuing at the temples, hearts beaming with hope. As a lifelong seeker, a student of Buddhism, a builder, a challenger, a self-improver in all seasons, I thought I had already learnt how to hold pain with grace.
But here I am again, unfolding into the unknown, asking myself the same rhetorical question:
What is the point of all this, if it ends in death anyway?
My mom returned to Ukraine last week. We’ve seen each other briefly almost a year ago. This time, I saw the depth in her that I’ve never had a chance to witness before. (Because I left home a decade ago in search of meaning.) Just being next to her was healing.
When she arrived back home, she called one of her best life-long friends who was fighting cancer. The kind of friend who helped raise my sister and me alongside her own children.
No answer. Later, her daughter called back. She said:
“Mom is gone.”
That’s how my mother found out. A sentence like a falling knife. No chance to say goodbye to her friend, no chance for a last hug. And then, as if that grief wasn’t enough, that same night, my hometown experienced one of the heaviest Russian attacks in months.
While my mother sat with fresh grief, the sky above her exploded.
Entrepreneurship, companies, ARR, strategy, growth… None of that matters to me this weekend.
To be honest, I know that I know nothing as a CEO. I’m just intuitively floating, grasping the air like a fish thrown to shore, trying to share what I think I know in this newsletter, and ask my podcast guests questions, hoping to learn what it really means—to be a first-time CEO.
This weekend, I’m just someone trying to breathe under the unbearable weight of being alive.
The unbearable weight of meaning.
Milan Kundera asked a different question.
In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, he explores the idea that life, because we live it only once, might actually be light, even meaningless. That our choices, our joy, our pain dissolve into nothing. That weightlessness, not weight, is what becomes unbearable.
But what if it’s the opposite?
What if it’s not the lightness that terrifies us —
But the weight?
The weight of knowing everything does matter. That grief leaves craters in the hearts of mothers. That cities burn while the world scrolls on. That someone you love will die. That you will die too.
And in the meantime, you still have emails to answer, budgets to close, strategies to finish, and a world to build.
Am I alone in thinking about this? Is there anybody here with me?
When meaning becomes unbearable.
I’ve always believed meaning saves us. That it’s the lighthouse. But sometimes, meaning itself becomes the burden. Sometimes, the pain of the world feels too full of meaning.
How do we go on living, creating, leading—when we are constantly reminded that we have no control, only the choice in how we respond?
When Kundera wrote about Tomas and Tereza, Sabina and Franz, he offered four ways to respond to the unbearable:
Tomas detaches. He chooses lightness.
Tereza roots herself in love—in heaviness—and finds peace.
Sabina runs. Always. She rebels. She isolates.
Franz clings to ideals. And dies because of them.
I’ve been all four.
But this weekend, I am just a daughter. And a woman whose soul feels too heavy to carry forward. And I haven’t been further from being a CEO than now.
So what do I do now?
I brush my puppy’s hair.
I write this.
I let myself cry for my mother’s pain.
I let the business wait.
And I remind myself:
Maybe this is leadership, too.
Not the polished part. Not the part with frameworks and insight. But the deep human truth that sometimes life is too much.
And still, we go on—not because we’re certain of meaning, but because meaning isn’t certain. And yet we are capable of creating it anyway.
No practical strategies in this edition.
No tools. No tips.
This time, I hope you share yours with me.
When meaning feels like too much, what carries you through?
I'd love to hear from you.
I read every reply.
Next time, I’ll share the original piece I had planned for today.
In the meantime, would you help me choose the next topics for The First-Time CEO?
With love, always,
Victoria
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