Life Is Like Sailing a Boat Against the Current (Part 2 of 2)
Part Two: What Keeps Xinhua Sailing?
Dear Reader,
In Part One, we explored the life motto that helped Xinhua travel from poverty in the Chinese countryside to an internationally respected scientific career and, eventually, into the unfamiliar world of business:
“Life is like sailing a boat against the current. If you are not moving forward, you are moving backwards.”
The metaphor helps explain how she continues moving. It gives her a boat she can steer, a destination worth pursuing and the willingness to travel towards hardship when it stands between her and something important. Yet it does not fully explain why she feels compelled to carry so much as she sails. For that, we must look at a quality that repeatedly emerged throughout our conversation: her profound sense of responsibility. Where did this responsibility begin, how has it shaped her journey, and how does her life motto help her continue carrying this weight?
Learning to Bear Responsibility at an Early Age
Xinhua’s relationship with responsibility began long before she became responsible for a company. Although she was raised primarily by her grandmother and did not feel particularly close to her parents, she remained subject to their expectations. As the eldest of three children, she was expected to look after her two younger brothers. Saying no did not feel like an option, so she learned to remain quiet, comply and carry the weight that had been placed upon her. Over time, responsibility became connected to her understanding of what it meant to be a good and decent person: when someone entrusted her with something, she would do everything possible to fulfil that trust. What began as a responsibility towards her brothers gradually became a broader way of approaching relationships, work and life. Once she accepted a commitment, walking away was no longer simply a choice; it risked becoming a failure to live up to the person she believed she should be.
Reflection: Which responsibilities in your life have you consciously chosen, and which ones feel imposed on you?
When Responsibility Becomes a Moral Obligation
This relationship with responsibility later shaped how Xinhua approached one of the most defining decisions in her life. Private investors had entrusted their money to a company she had helped establish. When circumstances made it impossible for her to continue balancing the company with her university career, she became convinced that she faced two choices: remain in the comfortable world of academia and allow the company to fail or leave that comfort behind to move toward hardship in the business world. Her strong belief that her actions could influence the outcome gave her the agency to act. Yet her either/or thinking left little room for alternative possibilities, while her prediction that the company would fail without her made the decision feel compelling. Most powerfully, walking away became equivalent to wasting the investors’ money and letting down people who had trusted her. As Xinhua explained, “I never let anybody down in my life.” What may have begun as a difficult professional choice therefore became a moral obligation: if she was a responsible and decent person, she had to stay with the commitment and carry it as far as she could.
Reflection: When you accept responsibility for something, are you ever able to walk away from it?
When Her Responsibility Expands to Others
Xinhua’s sense of responsibility does not end with her own decisions and actions. As the person leading the company, she believes that she ultimately carries responsibility for everything that happens within it. If an employee does not perform, she does not place responsibility solely on that employee; she also asks whether she failed to manage or replace them soon enough. If a product misses its opportunity in the market, she examines what she should have understood earlier. This internal sense of causation keeps her resourceful because it continually directs her attention towards what she can do differently. However, it can also obscure the boundary between influencing an outcome and being responsible for ensuring it. Employees retain responsibility for their own choices, while markets, timing and customer behaviour cannot be controlled by any one person. When Xinhua carries these factors as though their outcomes rest upon her, responsibility expands beyond her own actions and can become over-responsibility.
Reflection: Can you clearly distinguish between your responsibility to another person and the responsibility you may be taking on for them?
Taking Responsibility for Other People’s Feelings
Xinhua’s over-responsibility also extends into her closest relationships. She avoids sharing the full extent of her hardship with her children because she predicts that they would feel guilty about being unable to help her. By remaining silent, she hopes to protect them from the emotional weight of the path she chose. Her intention is deeply caring, yet it involves deciding in advance what they will feel and assuming responsibility for preventing that response. In doing so, she leaves them little opportunity to decide for themselves what they can hear, how they will respond or what support they may be able to offer. Xinhua takes responsibility not only for communicating her experience with care, but also for managing the feelings her words might produce in someone else. The result is that she carries her hardship alone, while the people closest to her are kept at a distance from an important part of her life.
Reflection: When you protect someone from a difficult truth, are you caring for them or taking responsibility for an emotional response that belongs to them?
The Responsibility Xinhua Owes Herself
When Xinhua was asked what responsibility she owed to herself, her initial answer was striking: “Nothing.” She could readily identify her responsibilities towards investors, employees and family, yet placing herself within that circle of care was much more difficult. After some reflection, she recognised a responsibility to protect her health, exercise and remain physically capable. Even then, however, caring for herself was partly understood as a means of continuing: without her health, she would be unable to keep working or fulfil her responsibilities towards others. Her own wellbeing was acknowledged but not valued entirely for its own sake. When attention remains fixed on what other people need and what still must be accomplished, personal needs can be discounted or treated as less urgent. Xinhua has learned to carry many people within her boat; the challenge may be recognising that the person steering it is also worthy of care.
Reflection: When you care for yourself, is it only so that you can continue caring for others, or do you believe that your wellbeing also matters in its own right?
Carrying the Weight Forward
Xinhua’s profound sense of responsibility gives her something important to sail for. From caring for her younger brothers to protecting the interests of investors, employees and family, she has repeatedly understood responsibility as a commitment that must be carried as far as possible. Her life motto then gives her a way to carry it: the boat offers agency, sailing converts responsibility into action, the current makes hardship a realistic expectation, and forward movement preserves the hope that her efforts will eventually create something valuable. Together, these meanings have helped her travel an immense distance from where she began. In this way, responsibility gives Xinhua her reason to keep sailing, while her life motto frames hardship as a current, or challenge she is prepared to meet as she continues towards what matters to her.
Reflection: What values, beliefs or life mottos give you the strength to keep moving towards what matters to you?
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