This book began in the space between two silences.

The first was the silence of a world in lockdown—a soft, sprawling quiet where time lost its shape and my life became a blue glow on a screen.

The second was sharper, deeper: the silence of my aunt’s empty chair at breakfast. It was the silence that followed her gentle voice, which had been my compass for so long.

In that void, I started to listen. I turned the computer—my former escape—into a mirror. I traced the patterns of my distraction and began to see them everywhere: in the games I played, the notifications I chased, the systems that taught us to value clicks over connection.

Learning Beyond Numbers is my attempt to bridge two worlds: the deeply personal landscape of memory and loss, and the logical realm of data, algorithms, and learning. It’s where grief meets machine learning, where a missed opportunity is analyzed through economics, and where I discovered that the most humane futures are built with both heart and code.

This is my story of waking up. Not just from sleep, but from numbness.