LLMs told me something amazing: “You want to live a life where you don’t have to translate your inner Mind Graph to Farsi or English” and that is quite right, that is why no language feels more alien to me.
One thing I can see very clearly these days is that I have had the best education in the world. My parents had an extremely rich environment at home. For me, I grew up with rich music, and technology and culture; all around me. I never got video games for my development; I had as much LEGO as I could. My father was a polymath—still is—who did so many things at the utmost highest level possible; and I had access to things others could never have. I played at real Labs when I was a kid; I had the chance to see things like spectrography; real dangerous acids; salt; so pure it cost 600$ per 100ml. I could see Earthquake simulators; silent chambers; fire safety labs where they burned everything. And I was only 5 or 6 at the time. My Dad had given me the task of measuring samples back then; and if a little bit of wind was there; the measurements did not work; you had to have a glass be put upon the measurer. I visited the Milad Tower when I was eight; and the project was a construction sites; and so I could see how they made such a place. I had access to things no one had. When I wanted to learn music; my Dad showed me to his friend who had learned jazz from Herbie Hancock. I had a meeting from my Dad with the board member of Renault who engineered the gear-box and acoustic of their cars. I had access to all of the greatest in Iran’s literature and cinema. At one farsi exam I had the whole of Persian Academy helping me; including Mr. Moradi Kermani because they were friends to my mother. My friend Koroush’s dad used to run a lab where they collect lightning; real ones; and build powerful lasers. We are almost always invited to Leili Rashidy theatres because of our relationship with them. There is no museum that I have not visited at least five times by now in the whole Tehran; there are not any great Children’s book that my Mom had not bought for me; an origami Robots; machinery of LEGO I did not have in my childhood and our home was filled with mind games; challenges; tales; book on almost everything; friends from all walks of life and creation. It was a great great life I have. Everything; any form of education that we talk with my team; I have had to the greatest measures. This has been amazing; I knew about Mechanics; Chemistry; Sound; Engineering; hard working; Decor; Design; Painting; Theater; Movies; Literature; History; Geography; Safety; … just so much. And so I feel immensely grateful today.
And so it feels both great to have this much opportunity, and on the other it makes me feel a bit stressed that I have had such a way of life that I have have just too much expectation from the others.
My Dad once told me a story about how he wanted to learn sculpture and there was this great artist he wanted to learn from. He goes by his shop, asks him if he’s willing to teach him. The man says to my Dad : “Do you see that sculpture there? go and make that, I’ll decide if i’d teach you or not”, he goes and works for two or three weeks and then comes back and he looks at his creation, says “I also have to test you on the other thing, go see if you can pull this other one off”, he goes and works for a month, comes back, and he says “now this other one”. The last one takes my father a few months, he works a lot on it, and once done, he goes back and says to the man: “Here, would you finally begin to teach me?” and then the man says “I just did, you need no more education”. My Dad ’s work is now in display at museums. And that is basically what he did to me, always opening more questions instead of concluding on the previous.