Catarina's World

The day I stop learning I’m dead. And even when that day comes I will not know everything there is to know.

The day I stop learning I'm dead.

Nobody does, even Einstein said he is not an expert on anything, merely curious. Did you for instance know that sweating leaves produce electricity? Neither did I until I came across that revelation.

Everybody has problems, the richest man in the world as well as the poorest. It’s just a question of what problems. The important thing though is what we learn from them. The easiest is to blame everybody else but that approach will just assure that the same problem happens over and over again. The smart, and interesting, way is to take responsibility for what happened, learn and move on.

In Saudi Arabia you learn a lot. KSA is, in my opinion, the most interesting country in the world because almost every day something happens that you have never experienced before. Life in the kingdom hence enriches you enormously, provided of course, that you are not stuck in your ways or intolerant. We are all different, and that’s what makes life beautiful. How boring it would be if we were all alike.

If you have a curious mind and constantly learn you can succeed with anything. Don’t know how many times I have been asked to do something I have never done before in different parts of the world. So I just found out, learnt and did it.

Sometimes I think people are afraid of learning and developing. It’s not only laziness but also easier to take the option of doing nothing since, they could, after all, fail. And society sometimes reward people for towing the line as opposed to learning and developing. It’s not unusual that even top positions are filled with executives who will just preserve the status quo. That’s all very well, but how will companies develop with that kind of mind-set? Sure control is important but surely not at the expense of the company learning, developing and improving results? And how can they do that unless they start looking at new and different options? Besides I don’t understand the contradiction since I have always followed company policy and at the same time learnt, developed and improved results.

For me acquiring new knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, preferences and understanding is vital. To be broad-minded and curious is probably one of the key, if not the key, aspect of life. And how would that be possible without constantly learning? I know more today than I did yesterday and will continue to do so for the rest of my life. I really enjoy living and am not afraid of dying but anything in between I’m simply not interested in. And isn’t that how we end up leading our lives if we stop learning with all that entails? Or maybe Oscar Wilde had a point when he said: “Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching”? Joke aside, at least that’s how we sometimes felt when we were at school.

(Photo: PhotoXpress giuseppe porzani)

Progress is defined as generally moving forward and if we look at it in that sense it’s interesting to ponder upon where in the world progress is taking place?

My friend Lubna Hussain has her own chat show on Saudi Television.

Sometimes it seems to me that Europe’s “getting old” and many people have stopped trying because they are content with the way things are. The welfare state plays a big role in the lazyness that has set in.

Am not a feminist, but after realizing that women in the EU, even in Sweden, are paid less then men for the same job, I am frankly stunned that more progress hasn’t been made during the last twenty years. Have told people all over the world numerous times that in Sweden there is complete equality between men and women. But men in the EU are still on average paid 15 percent more than women for exactly the same job. And these differences still exist even in public sector jobs, such as teachers. What we are looking at here is actually stagnation, which is the opposite of progress.

In Sweden the highest pay gap is in the finance sector where women are actually paid 18 percent less and with only 1,7 percent difference female staff working in architectural firms seems to have made the best choice. Most likely the lack of progress in this respect has been helped by the fact that people in general don’t talk about how much they earn? But the main reason is that people are too content and lazy to make an effort.

The Arab world on the other hand is making progress when it comes to equality between men and women:

Amal Soliman, Egypt’s first female marriage officer was appointed last year and the UAE followed suit and appointed Fatima Said Obeid as their first female marriage officer

Eva Habil is Egypt’s first female mayor for Komboha in the south

Egypt has 31 female judges

Kuwait has female members of parliament

My friend Lubna Hussain has her own talk show on Saudi television

Barbara Walters in the US actually wasn’t allowed to more than co-host a TV show until about ten years ago.  How many Americans would have thought that  Saudi Arabia would follow suit that swiftly?

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is appointing Saudi women to top positions and even has a female Saudi pilot. And there is an increasing number of work places in KSA that are mixed.

These are just some examples of progress has taken place within the last few years in the Middle East. But in Europe nothing much has been happening for the last twenty years or so.

Constant progress is, in my opinion, essential for development and I believe that the future belongs to the parts of this world that are still trying and hence making progress.

Or as Einstein put it: “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving”. Is the balance in this world moving towards the Middle East and Asia? Most likely because having a dream facilitates progress. In the Middle East and Asia more people are dreaming and making an effort to make their dreams come true. Equality between men and women is just one example. Or as Eleanor Roosevelt once put it: “the future belongs to those who have a dream”.

(Re-published on popular demand)