Heaven is not where the GDP grows – A story of Dubai

Since childhood I had this image of heaven, where people are genuinely happy. They greet each other from the same source of happiness. At the age of ten or eleven, every Friday morning I would tell imaginative stories about heaven to my little sister who had three years of age. In one of the stories that I still remember vividly, the Good Grand Mother sat on a magic carpet at the bottom of the oceans, inviting people to sit around her and have tea. She greeted the guests with love, and with a genuine smile. Aside from me and my little sister there were also other guests present, such as dolphins and mermaids.

The Question of Education

What we are creating in the name of education in most of our societies is based on a few core assumptions, which I believe are very questionable. Some of them are:

• Children are incomplete. They lack skills, knowledge and the required tools to fit properly in the society. They are like raw material that needs to be formed by elders to find the right shape.
• Children are born with different levels of intelligence. Some with higher IQs and some with lower. The main source of intelligence is in the head.
• Learning comes from the external world. The knowledge and skills are transfered to the student from the teachers, or the learning environment.
• Teaching, or the learning transaction is a one way road. It flows from the expert to the non-expert. From the teacher to the student.
• Education mainly happens in it’s own space; the school. It’s a process separated from daily family life.
• Children need to be equipped with ‘problem solving’ skills. As a measurement system, they are constantly given problems to be solved. The question is out there, created by the authority, you just need to find the right answers.

And many more…

The little boy says: Everything holds a story!

Once there was a little boy who believed every stone holds a story. He would lend his ears to a stone with closed eyes and allow the stream of images flow in front of his inner eyes. Sometimes the images told him an old story, sometimes they revealed a secret and some other times they provoked a dialogue. And it was not only the stones. Trees, birds, winds, shells and pine cones, they all held secrets to be shared.

Stories of Compassion

I was just listening to Zencast, episode 189 about compassion by Jack Cornfield. In the middle of the session, he invites the audience to reflect on moments in their lives when they have been touched by someone through a compassionate act. So I pausesed the audio and decided to find 3 names that instantly come to my mind from my childhood. Beleive me, it took less than 10 seconds, and I was shocked by the results. Three people that I might have not thought about for years. Then I decided to write down the three little stories. Here they go: