Shadowing Practice: 122 - Learn English Speaking with Video
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And that life ends at the moment where my wonderful son Ali leaves our world.
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Ali, maybe at the time he was 21 and a half.
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Ali, he was anything that a father would dream of a son to become.
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He was tall and handsome and funny as hell.
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Very kind, very generous, very tender, very loving.
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very wise, very wise, like painfully wise.
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And I can remember vividly that when he, you know, he lived in Boston,
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like you did for a while at the time he was studying in Northeastern University.
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And he had, so he was in a band and they were planning to tour the US at the time.
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And for some reason, he calls us and says, I feel compelled, his exact words,
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I feel compelled to come and see you before the tour.
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And so I immediately buy him a ticket.
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He flies over.
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My daughter is here as well.
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So, you know, it's like this family get together.
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We spend a couple of days together and then he gets this bellyache.
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We take him to a hospital.
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It's an appendix inflammation, very simple surgery.
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But then the surgeon does five mistakes in a row and Ali leaves our world.
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And so you may think of this as the end of a father's life.
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And you wouldn't blame me if you had hugged him once.
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You wouldn't blame me if it was that way.
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It was the start of my second life, if you want.
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So Ali leaves, Aya, my daughter comes to me four days later.
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She says he had a dream that he was everywhere and part of everyone.
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Which if you sort of understand spirituality reasonably well,
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that basically means you've disconnected from the limits of the physical world.
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Your soul is not judged or governed by time or space.
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And so if you're outside of the physical limits of your physical form, you're everywhere.
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You can see everything.
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And if you return back to the source, to God, then you're at the source of where all the spirits or all of the souls come from.
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Then you're part of everyone and you know I only understood
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that believe it or not six or seven years after he left
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when he when he when she told me that he had that dream
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and told her about it my very blurry mind this was
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four days after I lost my son my blurry mind thought of it as a quota as
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if it's my son who in many many ways was my teacher in so many ways was giving me a target,
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was saying, make me everywhere and part of everyone.
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And at the time, as I said, I was running Google.
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So everything I did wasn't, you know, with the intention of reaching billions of people.
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And I knew how to do that.
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And so I found myself sitting down, you know, of course I cried and then I heard me say,
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of course, Habibi, consider it done.
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I'll make you everywhere and part of everyone.
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And that basically meant that I needed to take Ali's essence, whatever made him who he is.
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And my devious plan was to put that in a book,
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you know, make that book successful enough so that people who read it tell others about it.
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and hopefully through six degrees of separation, a tiny, tiny, tiny part of his essence will move from you to someone else,
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to someone else, to someone else.
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And eventually Ali will be everywhere and part of everyone.
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And so that book was Solved for Happy,
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which was the summary of the journey I lived with Ali at the times where I had my first life.
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So in my first life, I was extremely successful.
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I was printing money on demand.
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I had everything that everyone dreams of.
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Google this.
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Even before Google.
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In my early 20s, because of my programming and math abilities,
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1996, I wrote a piece of code before Google that would scout the internet for insider information about stocks
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and basically does the mathematics of technical analysis on every stock chart.
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And every morning I'd wake up in the morning
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and my code would have run overnight after the market closes in the U.S to recommend to me four buys
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and four sets.
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And I was literally printing money on demand.
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I remember once my wonderful wife then, she's now my ex but still wonderful, would come to me and say, we need to change the car.
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And I'm like, yeah, what are you looking for?
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And she says, I need this.
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And, you know, let's buy this.
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And I was like, that's going to have to be Wednesday, you know, because the market opens Monday.
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I trade on Monday and Tuesday and the money is available Wednesday.
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This was just a joke, honestly.
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And at the time I was so miserable, so miserable.
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And it's really a testimony to what the nature of happiness is that I, you know, I just couldn't go on.
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And Ali was the one that basically helped me understand the reality of happiness.
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My mathematical brain would think of it algorithmically, and then I would go to him and explain what I understand.
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And he would look at me and entertain me with a couple of questions as if he's interested.
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And then would tell me, you could have asked me, like, I know that stuff in my heart.
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and so he would tell it to me in a way
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that you know a normal human not a mess machine would understand and so
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when he left our world i just had to write what
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he taught me down i mean i was driven by
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that idea of making him everywhere and part of everyone
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but i was also driven by the idea of not forgetting what he taught me
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and uh and so solve for happy became a mega best seller.
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I think we're approaching a million copies by now.
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And I left Google, and I have basically, I started something that I call 1 billion happy.
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And yeah, I wake up every morning attempting to make a few people happier
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or attempting to remove a reason for unhappiness in the world.
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And between those two, you asked me, why do I do what I do?
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I mean, what better could you do in life?
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My wonderful, my daughter, you know, one day came to me and said, you should know that God paid you in advance.
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I was like, what do you mean?
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And she said, And it's true.
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I'm born and raised in Egypt, public school, public university in Egypt.
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You don't get to be chief business officer Google X with that, honestly.
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I was born with this math abilities and technical abilities.
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And then I went so far, way beyond what I deserve, if you want.
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And Aya is so clever.
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She comes and she says,
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you've been paid in advance you're going to be assigned the duty to pay back what you've been given.
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And to be very, very honest, I honestly have not worked a single day since I wake up in the morning,
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I think deeply about a topic, put it on the pages of a book, and people read it.
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Can you imagine the privilege of putting your thoughts on paper and someone reads it, right? and then
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I travel the world and meet wonderful people like you
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and go speak at important events and it's just been a dream to be honest,
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that's why I do it Was it easier to deal with your loss in the years that unfolded after Ali's passing?
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Was year zero the hardest, year one a little easier or has it all been extremely challenging from then until now.
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Wow.
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What a question.
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It's been the hardest thing ever.
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I think it's the hardest thing a loving father would ever feel.
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Until this minute.
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So every time, most people don't know this, every time you bring up Ali, I feel a physical pain right here.
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It's physical.
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It's almost like I always say that the bottom right-hand side of my heart is missing.
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And I pinpointed, I know exactly where it is.
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It's so weird.
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But it's been the best thing that ever happened, believe it or not.
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Since the minute he left, myself and his wonderful mother,
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Nibel is a very, very, very loving person.
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And Ali was everything.
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And she's emotional and she's delicate and she's feminine.
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And both of us, I mean, Habibti, when he died, she said, take me to him.
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And I said, no, I don't advise that.
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She said, just take me to him.
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Okay, I need to say goodbye.
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And so she walks into the intensive care room.
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He's gone.
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And what does she say?
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She kisses him on the forehead and says, Habibi, you're finally home.
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You're finally home.
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That is so true.
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This angel wasn't from here.
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He was not from here.
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And by the way, we all know that this is not home.
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This is just a passage where, you know, you stop under a tree for a while.
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And that eventually, when you give up on your physical form, that's where real home is.
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And it's so interesting because I'm born Muslim, I studied Islam very deeply,
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and in a very interesting way, we know deep inside us
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that there is a big gift if you lose a child
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and you're steady and you're sort of accepting
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and you don't rebel against the divine and curse everything and why me and all of that.
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And I can easily tell you, I'm very stoic in my nature, but I couldn't imagine that Nibel wouldn't go there.
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But some kind of weird blessing just came onto both of us in a very unusual way.
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We literally, literally, not for a second, were disgruntled about it.
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So the pain that we feel is the pain of missing him, which is an incredible sign of how much we love him.
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But we don't feel that we were betrayed by life.
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We don't feel that this doctor is evil.
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We don't feel that we never did.
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And you have to question that because in my physics mind,
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I had to start thinking about the interesting sequence of events in the world.
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You can look at events in your life and think of them in chronological order.
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Like I landed in Riyadh and then I drove here and then I met you.
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That's the chronological unfolding of events that the human brain understands.
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But if you think deeper, you can think of things in causality, in causal order.
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So, you know, someone needs to hear what I'm about to say.
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And so accordingly, I ended up here to meet you.
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And accordingly, you ended up, or we were introduced by Sarah.
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And so, you know how, and if you think of fate as one of the threads through which things happen,
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then almost the same day, I was so surprised by my car.
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I was even more surprised by Nibel's car.
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And I had to tell myself maybe that promise, and I still pray that every day, that promise that if you lose a child,
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he's gonna hold your hand and take you to heaven.
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when you leave as well.
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Maybe if you think about it from a causality point of view, in the absence of time, that has already happened.
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And because it happened, I had to stay calm.
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Do you understand?
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And Nibel had to stay calm.
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We had no choice because that's already written in space-time.
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And, or, you know, beyond life is not space-time, but it's already written in fate, if you want.
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And it blew my mind that until today, I never had a minute where I said, why did you do this?
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Why did you take him?
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Who Will Benefit from This Video?
This video is ideal for intermediate to advanced English learners aiming to refine their conversational skills and emotional expression. The speaker’s heartfelt narrative combines everyday language with reflective storytelling, making it perfect for those practicing english speaking practice focused on fluency and authenticity. It also works well for learners interested in understanding cultural nuances of grief and resilience, as the dialogue balances personal anecdotes with deeper philosophical ideas.
Words & Idioms Worth Stealing
The video features several impactful phrases that add depth to speech:
- "Compelled": Feeling strongly driven to do something (e.g., "I felt compelled to call my friend").
- "Painfully wise": Unusually wise for one’s age, often with a sense of maturity beyond years.
- "Six degrees of separation": The idea that everyone is connected through six or fewer relationships (e.g., "Through six degrees of separation, her story reached me").
- "Devious plan": A clever, unexpected strategy (used playfully here, not negatively).
How to Get the Accent Right
The speaker’s tone is warm and conversational, with subtle pauses that emphasize emotion. To practice, focus on:
- Intonation in storytelling: Notice how the speaker rises and falls in pitch when describing Ali’s visit ("We spend a couple of days together") versus the tragic turn ("then he gets this bellyache"). Mimicking this rhythm helps convey emotion in improve english pronunciation.
- Reduced speech: Phrases like "you know" and "sort of" are spoken quickly, blending into the flow. Use a shadowing app to repeat these naturally, avoiding over-enunciation.
- Pausing for effect: The speaker pauses before key details (e.g., "the surgeon does five mistakes in a row"). Practice pausing to build tension, a skill that enhances clarity in shadow speak exercises.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is not judged · was driven · was also driven |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | you've disconnected · you've been paid · have not worked |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | people who read · him, which is |
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.