How childhood memories, school years, and first love can become the fuel for growth and inner strength — even if back then it felt like the whole world was against you. These reflections are shared by Ruslan Gafarov, entrepreneur and founder of San Francisco Innovation Hub, in this article.
For the past year, I’ve been seeing a psychologist. If you’ve ever been in therapy, you know: sooner or later, the conversation goes back to childhood. Those very first years — from one to seven. It seems like just small things: how your mom spoke to you, what you felt when left alone, which joys and which hurts stuck with you. But it’s from those fragments that the framework of who you become is built.
Then comes school. Elementary, middle, high school. University. I tried to replay these stages in my head, to really look: what mattered to me back then? What made me get out of bed in the morning?
I remember borrowing a book from a friend about the theory of relativity and Einstein’s biography. I wasn’t reading it because I understood it — half of the terms went right over my head. I read because each page opened something new about the world, like a doorway into a reality where anything was possible.
I loved science fiction. But what grabbed me wasn’t the space or the technology — it was the stories about the future, where a person wasn’t just a spectator but an active participant. Where you could influence events, change your destiny.
I was born in the Soviet Union. I knew almost nothing about religions — the topic was closed off. And science fiction, I guess, was the only way to even think about the meaning of life, about what might be “beyond.”
But stronger than any book, what really pushed me were the wounds. My first love, for example. We’d date, break up, get back together again. Everything was emotional, dramatic. And inside me something switched on — I wanted to prove she was wrong to leave me. That I could. That I wasn’t lesser.
That became my fuel. It got me up at six in the morning, drove me to run, to train, to study for entrance exams. Just a teenager’s drama, you might think. But in reality, it was exactly what put me on the path I later followed.
There was another kind of fuel too — disbelief. When people didn’t believe in you. Even close ones could say: “You’ll never amount to anything. You’ll end up working on a construction site or as a janitor.” And that — that can be an even stronger fuel than support.
Looking back now, I see: that young guy lived on “I’ll show you.” On stubborn “you’re all wrong.” There was a lot of pain in that, but also a lot of energy.
And today, I get up from a different foundation. No more running, no proving. From a quieter, more inward place. But I’m grateful for that early energy. Without it, I wouldn’t be here. And maybe that’s why it’s so important sometimes to look back: to understand what used to drive you — and what drives you now.
