TV isn't my thing ... except for sports and HBO. So it should come as no surprise that one of my favorite shows is Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel. I am not a big fan of Bryant Gumbel himself, but I do love how the show's correspondents, such as Frank Deford or Bernard Goldberg, pull larger observations on society or life out of stories on "just" sports.
The current episode features a story by Goldberg on cold water, long distance swimmer Lewis Gordon Pugh. From Pugh's website: "[He] has pioneered more swims around famous landmarks than any other swimmer in history." These swims include the most northern and southern long distance swims, being the first person to swim around the Cape of Good Hope, and the longest polar swim.
"I never do the same swim twice, unless it is for training. The next swim must be harder and more challenging, otherwise I am going backwards," Pugh says. "Sometimes we set boundaries for ourselves in life, or even worse, we allow others to do so. In many cases, these boundaries are just in our mind and need to be pushed away."
At the end of the piece, Goldberg quoted Dave Wienbaum, who wrote, "The secret to a rich life is to have more beginnings than endings." I was struck not only by how obviously appropriate this is to my own personal life, but also, to entrepreneurship in general. Especially when the IPO market remains as dismal as it is. According to the NVCA and Venture Economics, only ten VC-backed companies raised $540.8 million (a minuscule amount) through IPO's in Q1 2006. Very cold water indeed.
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