Learning is to the mind what exercise is to the body
Monday, August 2nd, 2010The 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)
