I grew up in a family with three siblings. My parents were always very supportive and encouraging. It was impo... — Maryam Mirzakhani

I grew up in a family with three siblings. My parents were always very supportive and encouraging. It was important for them that we have meaningful and satisfying professions, but they didn't care as much about success and achievement.

Author: Maryam Mirzakhani

Insight: There's something quietly radical about parents who distinguish between a meaningful career and a successful one. Most of us grow up absorbing the opposite message—that these should naturally align, that doing work you love should also make you prominent or wealthy. Mirzakhani's parents seemed to understand something different: that you can spend your whole life solving problems that matter deeply, that bring you genuine satisfaction, without needing external validation to confirm it was worthwhile. This distinction matters more now than ever, when we're all performing our lives on social media and measuring ourselves against impossible standards. The pressure to be not just good at something, but visibly, measurably successful at it, can actually erode the thing that made the work meaningful in the first place. A teacher might love their job until they start counting Twitter followers. An artist might enjoy creating until they're constantly wondering if it's "successful enough." What Mirzakhani's upbringing seems to offer is permission to ask a different question: not "Will this make me famous or rich?" but "Will this let me think deeply about something I care about?" For most people, that's actually the rarer and more precious thing—the kind of professional life that sustains you, rather than exhausts you chasing its shadow.