My grandfather, Pyar C. Mehta, was born on October 28, 1902. He died before I was born, but his motto:

"Never be afraid to learn new things"

has become an integral part of my attitude towards life, and I'm glad that @GyanCMehta instilled it in me.

(1/14)

My grandfather lived through two world wars, a global pandemic, a global economic depression, the development of nuclear power, jet airplanes, space travel ...

The radical change he saw in his lifetime did include plenty of turmoil and strife. But also tremendous progress (2/14)

So many parts of life are better for so much of the world today compared to 118 years ago. We can communicate in real-time with people anywhere on the globe. Advances in healthcare mean formerly fatal diseases are now easily curable ... the list goes on and on (3/14)

I sometimes wonder how much my grandfather's motto was born from observing all this. There is of course personal joy in learning, but I think there's also an important observation about chasing away some of the demons of human nature that can steer our world into chaos. (4/14)

I've thought about this a lot in 2020. As a kid, I often wondered, "Who would be *afraid* to learn something new? Why?"

But learning something new means leaving the comfort of things you *already know* and venturing into the unknown. You might fail. You might be wrong. (5/14)

This process of making mistakes and learning is normal for kids but scary for a lot of grown-ups.

It makes it easy to slide into tribalism and siloed thinking. All too often, folks stick with people who look, think, and talk like them. It's 'easy'. (6/14)

This is sad. Without learning, we miss out on so much joy - the joy of discovery. The joy of success that can only be appreciated when won through failure. The joy of realizing our common humanity and making a connection with another human being. (7/14)

My grandfather's attitude sparked several generations worth of success and achievement in a wide range of areas ... One of his sons literally wrote the book on Random Matrix Theory. Another son hosted @BillClinton's election night victory party in Little Rock in 1992. (8/14)

Our society glorifies folks like @BillGates and Mark Zuckerberg who move from "upper middle class Harvard dropout" to "billionaire". But there are so many stories of immigrant families like mine who have made huge order-of-magnitude jumps with no safety net. (9/14)

It makes me smile to think that even though I never met him, my grandfather has had an impact on my life through his work ethic, love of learning, and entrepreneurial spirit that have been passed on through the generations. And I feel that impact every day. (10/14)

And bigger-picture observations aside, trying to "never be afraid to learn new things" has brought me so much fun and personal happiness in my life and career ... I've had a blast jumping from physics to a number of parts of the tech world. (11/14)

My grandfather was a surveyor in Rajasthan. I always thought it was kind of fun that my first job when I jumped from physics to @Akamai was on the Mapping team - responsible for 'surveying' the Internet. (12/14)

Outside of work, I feel lucky to live in a world where it's so easy to access information and learn about so many different things. (Being a part of enabling that flow of information is one of the reasons I love working at @Twitter.) (13/14)

When @GyanCMehta shares the joy of an astronomical observation or math puzzle with me, and when I share this joy with my son and daughter, it makes me smile to think that it's a continuation of what my grandfather shared with my dad. And I hope my kids will pass it on too (14/14)