Five Lessons from a 91-Year-Old Grandmother: Lex Fridman Remembers the Woman Who Shaped Him

Lex Fridman opens by saying he has been at a loss for words but not for thoughts and memories since learning that his grandmother had died several days earlier. He wants to use the podcast to honor the woman responsible for much of who he is, who taught him strength, wisdom, compassion and love, and who told him he could do anything he set his mind to. She died in Moscow at 91, soon to be 92, and his first words to listeners are to tell friends and family that you love them.

The first lesson is to be mentally strong and never complain. She was born and raised near Kharkiv and survived the famine of 1932-33 that Stalin inflicted on millions of people, one of the great atrocities of the twentieth century. As a teenager she lived through the Second World War in an occupied city, and she rarely spoke of those years beyond stories of hunger and tragedy.

Fridman says that in her eyes there always remained a glimmer of hope amid the suffering. Such experience, he suggests, hardens the heart to protect it from the world but also softens it for deep connection with others. He says he is drawn to a similar mindset in David Goggins, but he calls his grandmother the toughest human being he has ever known.

The second lesson was physical strength. Fridman remembers images from childhood of his grandmother doing feats of manual labor, such as carrying logs and heavy things, without complaint, just getting the job done. As a boy in Russia he adored the bogatyrs, the warrior heroes of ancient legend who were like knights or Vikings, and wanted to be one.

He had imagined bogatyrs as men who went to war and were celebrated by the women at home. Watching his grandmother, he realized that women could be those warriors as well. She planted an Eastern European admiration for strength and toughness, which he thinks is why wrestling felt like home, and why the fire that kept him training through his early beatings on the mat was her.

The third lesson is to be quiet and think until you understand the situation and the right thing to say. The right words, he says, come from considering the big picture rather than from the young person's urge to feel upset and focus on me, me, me. His grandmother's quiet way of looking over the world, and her rare words of calm and patience, inspired his impatient mind.

She helped him see that the ups and downs of immediate emotional response color perception and cognition, and how everything is interpreted. Taking your time, being quiet and speaking only when you have something to say became his model of the kind of man he should be.

The fourth lesson was to believe in himself. She made him feel like the most special person in the world who could achieve anything, and her excitement over small successes taught him to love the successes of others and encourage them to dream big. He finds it heartbreaking that very few people in his life believed in him, since even loved ones urged him toward the safe, reasonable, stable path.

Fridman acknowledges that over-the-top encouragement can spoil some people or inflate the ego, and that he is not a parent. But for someone he describes as genetically full of self-doubt, even disliking himself, she was a breath of fresh air. The fire she kindled, he says, will never die, and on days when self-doubt grinds him to a halt and he feels like a fraud, he listens to what she left him.

The fifth lesson, taught through her actions as much as words, is to put love into the world. Her husband, Fridman's grandfather Gregory, died at 58 in 1986, and she loved him her whole life, a quiet but unshakable love that was always in her eyes. That loyalty and deep connection stayed with him, and he seeks the same with close friends, with the world and with a life partner.

Beyond that, he saw in her a deep joy that acknowledges life is suffering and love is hard, but appreciates the whole of it anyway. She taught him to love people, life and the world no matter what the world does to you, and not to be afraid of being cliche or simple. He closes by reading a Russian poem she enjoyed about learning to treasure love, then makes a toast to her memory and promises to work hard and make her proud.