Last month, I was on my way back from a work trip in Stockholm. I was flying back via Dubai, where I grew up. Where my sister currently lives, with two darling little kids who I barely get to spend time with.

She said, stop by and say hi?

And I dismissed it rather quickly. It was stressing me out.

With work exploding, it feels like I’m constantly behind. A couple of extra days off after a week-long work trip would only push me deeper into the ocean of undone things that I was already drowning in.

I am really close with my sister, so it wasn’t an awkward conversation – she gets it and isn’t imposing in any way.

Which makes it worse. The ones that love you the most get it, and so you allow yourself to push them away just a bit more. Because they get it.

They get that you’re trying to do something different, something arguably important. But their unwavering support sprays a shade of entitlement onto your psyche. An entitlement that justifies compromise, sometimes unreasonably, creeping slowly into a weird sense of subtle, subverted narcissism.

The reason I gave my sister was that even if I came, I would be so distracted and distraught with all the undone things that I would end up feeling worse than not visiting.

Okay, she said. And that was that.

These days, I come home to proud parents. Proud, retired parents whose goal now more than ever is to support their child in his seemingly good work. Work that’s not some run-in-the-mill 9-to-5, but something that’s trying to make things better, something that allows pride to be contagious.

I come home late, exhausted and hungry. Mum has already texted asking me, when do you leave? so she can prepare ahead. A plate is already on the table and the food is already hot – twenty minutes later, my dinner is done. Dad doesn’t even allow me to take my plate to the sink.

In those twenty minutes at the dining table, I am generally grumpy, uninterested in updating them or anyone about anything, thinking about the hundred things that happened that day and the next hundred that need to happen the next day.

My father gets the major updates on my work by listening in on update calls with others – two birds, right? My mother is happy with a daily hug, which I sometimes forget.

There lies the irony.

For once, I have my darling parents so close to me and I still seem to be keeping them on the fringes – finding myself distracted in the name of the “greater good” while riding their pride, murmuring to myself I’ll fix it later.

And they never complain. Because they get it.

It really isn’t as simple as you’d imagine. The work we are trying to do is important. It is hard and grueling with unknowns that seem to grow at the rate of knowns but with the potential to result in deep, long-lasting systemic change. At what cost, though?

Then there’s the investor world, sucking your soul, putting you through the wringer, and then ghosting you. I find it especially overwhelming when impact “patient” investors define impact and patience differently, often seeming more impatient than impactful while copy-pasting sharky term sheets from traditional investors.

Maybe, I’m being unfair or biased because these aren’t bad people – they’re good people with good intentions just doing things like they are.

The irony is that they first ask: what’s your unique selling point (USP)? and once they’re convinced of our uniqueness, they treat us like a homogeneous crew of social entrepreneurs.

A convenient flip of tone, a magical sleight of hand made easier by the classic power dynamic between the money-giver and the money-taker, exacerbated here in India by our deep-rooted paternalism and our “sir” culture.

I feel like I need to just snap out of it, but it’s not that straightforward. The work we are doing is hard and against the tide. It requires extraordinary effort to create the impact we want, and money plays an important role. But at what cost?

Amidst all this noise, I feel like I have to constantly remind myself of the true reasons I’m doing what I do.

This week, a former waste-picker who briefly worked with us committed suicide. He had been wrestling with alcoholism while his community seemed to both shun and support him. That’s how it is out there sometimes – ridicule for bad behaviour but always room for some support and second chances.

One of these second chances was working with us. He joined us at the beginning of the year and worked for a couple of months. He seemed to be doing well until he started coming to the lab intoxicated. After a slew of second chances and multiple stretches of unexplained absences, we had to let him go.

I remember asking him if there was a reason for his alcoholism, suspecting deeper psychological issues. We didn’t get much out of him, but he did once mention that he thought his wife was having an affair.

We don’t know anything for sure, but this week, on that fateful morning, he was drunk. He fought with his wife, physically abused her, and then hung himself, leaving behind two children – 10 and 5. And two widows – his wife and his mother-in-law.

Poverty is more complex than just income, jobs, health, and education. There is an entire obscure layer of psychological health that is rarely addressed.

The poor go through a lot more than you and me. They are probably more resilient than us because they have to be. But that doesn’t mean they are immune to psychological issues. In fact, often times these issues are masked by their poverty.

Last month, I gave a well-deserved raise to a top-performing colleague. And he broke down into tears. He has only studied till 10^th grade and comes from a low-income background. While he has worked hard all his life, he just doesn’t seem to have gotten a break. Wiping his tears, he said this is the first time someone has truly valued his work.

And then I wept, multiple times, thinking how something as basic as valuing someone fairly for their work can mean so much – how low is this bar that we have set for ourselves?

These are hard problems we are working on. Does that justify me pushing my loved ones away a little? Does it make it okay to sell my soul to investors a little?

There isn’t a clear answer, but I generally find clarity in reflection.

What I know is that this is a long-term affair, and if I burn out too quickly, no one’s really better off. So maybe I can slow down a little, find the right investors partners without selling my soul and focus on building for the long run – all the while maintaining my sanity.

For which I need my loved ones.

And I probably need to get a tattoo somewhere that says: it’ll never be perfect.