‘Don’t listen to people, don’t be satisfied with stories,
how things has gone with others, and unfold your own myth.’
RUMI

“When a kid in Afghanistan says: “I want to be a pilot”, at the age of four, you know he is going to be either studying business, economics, medicine or engineering when he is 20. Growing up in Afghanistan, we never had liberty and there’s a lot that is already decided for you by the society. I was at a point where I had to decide for myself: am I able to “unfold my own myth”?

If you look into the life of Rumi, you won’t find a single decision where he was doing something that he was told to do, that he was copying something. He could have gone to Islam and been an Islamic Cleric, but we don’t remember him as an Islamic cleric, we know him as a poet because he decided differently.

When I was leaving my job. I saw a lot of these motivational speeches from Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, to see how they started up. But they mostly talk about techniques and methods. If I tell you Apple you tell me iPhone. If I tell you Bill Gates you tell me Microsoft. These are products, these are things. If I listen to Bill Gates, I won’t be able to implement it in Afghanistan. But if I read Rumi, he is not talking about a method, he is talking about personality and character and the internal feeling one needs to have. He shows you the internal feeling of getting somewhere real.”