– The dirth behind the shiny side –

I am a firm believer that everything in life, absolutely everything, has its price. Life is a give and take. Energy transforms to matter and matter to energy. And so everything we achieve, or don’t achive, we pay for it.

In the previous article I mentioned some of the lucks I have had in my professional field. Reading it, it might sound like a show off. Or it might look suferficial and too perfect. The truth is there is another side for it. There has been a price I have paid for each and everything I have been lucky to gain.

lets have a brief look.

The price of my luck

• At the age of 19, still a teenager, I had to learn to live alone, away from my family and my friends, to become emotionally independant, I had to learn how to communicate with people whom I didn’t even know their language, I had to learn how to make friends, how to spend time alone. This is before Internet was popular and I was communicating with my family with physical letters.
• To prepare for my university exams, even the simplest ones, I sometimes had to translate 70% of each page, word by word, from Japanese into English. and then sometimes from English to Persian, for the professional words I didn’t know. Just to remind, this is before the age of personal computers and google searche engines. I used paper dictionary, and later a digital dictionary, which I had to search word by word.
• I don’t remeber how many nights I stayed at university, finishing up my work before a deadline, taking photo of my models on rooftop with the sunrise, riding a bike back home to take few hours nap before getting up for my classes.
• Before my Master thesis deadline, my nose was bleeding from lack of sleep, and still I didn’t want to give up. Not out of obligation, I was in a flow state that I couln’t stop before getting into perfection (which existed only in my mind)
• During my last year of master, when we din’t have so many classes, I don’t remember how many competitions I took part in, until well, I won one. When everyone else was not bothering even to come to the university, I was spending hours in my laboratory, many of the time by myself, as the computers there where easy to use.
• The three years I spent in the star architect office, were like military service. 16 hours work per day on weekdays, half day on Saturday and sometimes even on Sundays.with one week vacation during new year. many nights spent in the office, to go home by 5AM train, take a nap, a quick shower and be back by 9:30. Sounds brutal, but these are 3 best years of my professional life. I felt I am at top of the world, running in an important race.
• Overcoming injustice, finding ways to keep my motivations alive and not caring about what people think , are skills I developed growing in my career in a male oriented society, Japan.
• During the year I was preparing for my architect license exam, I had school every Saturday. and Sunday, from 9AM to 9PM during last months. doing homework and studying everyday, before work, during lunchtime and sometimes after work.
• Leading multidisiplinary international teams, taking responsibilities, overcoming deadlines have a lot of mental pressure.
• There are laways small people, who don’t want to try hard, and it bothers them when you do so, because they remeber their laziness. So they do whatever to pull you down. Ignoring this, even using it as a feed for your motivation, is a skill, which I earned over years.
• Deciding to come out of the system, trying to break my ego, to take off my professional identity that I was wearing for years, to discover my inner shine, during my sabbatical year, have not been so easy. Starting from zero, in a new environment, without even knowing the language, needs a lot of unlearning. Which sometimes can be harder than learning.

And so what?

Writing about them now, some of them sound awful. But believe me, tough things sound hard when said. when you are doing something for a purpose, for a goal, the hardship gives you love, the energy to move on. My toughest moments in life have made most beautiful moments as well. Going through things that make you feel alive, are the best fruits of any achievements. Both sides of the coin are to be embrased.