Building Products, Raising a Child, and Letting Go of Control

I spend a lot of my life switching roles.

Some days it feels clean. Most days it does not.

One minute I’m thinking about product design for a personal health app. The next I’m in a school lunch panic. Then a conversation with my son Evaan. Then King — my 9-year-old Maltese Shih Tzu — staring at me with the kind of loyalty that makes your inner noise feel a bit embarrassing.

And somewhere inside all of that, I keep sitting with a line that is much easier to admire than to live:

The Roles Are Real. They Are Just Not The Deepest Thing.

I am a father. That is real. I am building products. Also real. I have obligations, bills, deadlines, responsibilities. Very real.

But when I suffer, it is usually not because the roles exist. It is because I start believing I am only the roles.

That subtle shift changes everything.

Builder identity Every product delay feels personal. Not a setback — a verdict.

Parent identity Every tough moment with Evaan feels like a referendum on whether I’m failing as a father.

Competence identity Every mistake feels identity-threatening. The scoreboard becomes the self.

The idea I keep returning to is not that roles are fake. It is that roles are interfaces. They are functions. Responsibilities. They are not the whole of what I am.

The Bhagavad Gita Taught Me Action. Ashtavakra Is Teaching Me Identity.

The Bhagavad Gita gave me a language for duty, steadiness, and not handing my peace over to outcomes. It showed up in how I parent Evaan. In how I think about effort. In how I try to keep walking when life gives me no guarantee.

But the Ashtavakra Gita, as I’m beginning to understand it, goes one layer deeper.

That question has stayed with me. Because before I can let go of the outcome, I often need to notice who inside me is gripping it.

The Operating System of Self.

Builders like mental models. This is the one that helped me most.

Every role I play is an application.

If the apps think they are the whole machine, the system gets unstable very quickly. That is what a lot of modern life feels like. We confuse the app with the operating system.

When people say “you are not the roles you play,” I don’t hear that as spiritual theatre anymore. I hear it as systems advice.

Awareness Is Infrastructure.

Infrastructure is rarely the flashy part. Nobody writes home about clean plumbing or stable servers until they fail. But the quality of the whole experience depends on them.

Awareness feels like that.

When awareness is weak When awareness is strong Every thought becomes an order Stress is still there — but I can see it Every emotion becomes an identity Fear is still there — I don’t instantly become it Every outcome becomes a referendum Ambition is still there — but it’s not driving with both hands Every role becomes absolute Life has somewhere sane to stand

Parenting Made This Impossible To Ignore.

I can fake a lot of things alone. I cannot fake presence with a child.

Kids expose your actual operating system.

When he loses, disappointment arises in me. When he struggles, fear arises. When I’m tired, irritation arises. The question is not whether those things appear. The question is whether I collapse into them.

Building Products Teaches The Same Lesson — Just With Different Costumes.

I start with service. Then ego quietly enters the room.

Responsibility Do the work properly. Adult. Workable. Yours.

Control Make reality obey. Fantasy. Exhausting. Not yours.

The witness does not remove ambition. It removes the hallucination that your inner state should rise and fall with every graph, reply, launch, or delay.

King Knows Something I Keep Forgetting.

King — my dog — has been around me through versions. Busy me. Tired me. Ambitious me. Frustrated me. Quiet me.

Dogs have no interest in your roles. They respond to your presence. Children are not that different.

That has become a useful test: in the middle of all my roles, can the beings I love actually feel me here? If not, I’m probably over-identified with some performance layer again.

Letting Go Of Control Is Not Giving Up.

I am not interested in becoming passive. I still want to build. Write. Provide well. Design well. Parent well. Make beautiful, useful things.

Letting go of control does not mean becoming vague. It means:

For me, this is not mastered wisdom. It is active debugging. Some days I remember. Some days I disappear into the role completely. Some days I am the witness. Some days I am just a tired man checking too many tabs in his own mind.

But even that has become easier to see. And seeing is already a kind of freedom.

The Version I Can Actually Use In Daily Life.

The roles still run. The work still matters. The child still needs raising. The products still need shipping.