Show off what you're proud of

Human beings like to be proud of their possessions - whether there is a merit of their own in that or not. Russians are proud of being successors of Pushkin, Lomonosov, and Peter the Great, although the generation of today didn't contribute to the accomplishments of the ancestors. We simply inherit the culture, traditions, and the brand (both positive and negative sides) of fathers bearing the same mindset, behaviour, and social  "patterns". Regardless of a past we inherited naturally we incline to find something we can be proud of and show off our connection to that.

But reasons for pride are not confined only by our roots. In the States it's highly popular to take pride in your Alma Mater (on car title frames, car stickers, caps, and clothes), schools and sport clubs of the kids, or favorite sport teams. I enjoy the fact that in Georgia there are no front car titles so many drivers utilize this empty space for showing off what they're passion about. Motherland's flag is among the very popular options. I have only in my subdivision flags of England, Canada, Turkey, and UK. Today we've widened with Israel. I had a small dilemma: after growing, studying, and living 27 years in Russia and spending only 5.5 years in Israel what country to pick up? Nevertheless, the choice was easy. Israel is thought in our family as the spiritual motherland and Russia as natural (biological?) mother. I love both but when ought to decide what prevails it's an easy choice. I promise to find a magnet sticker of Russian flag and put it to the back door:-)

Just before publishing the blog another recollection flashed in my mind. In Israel having a sticker of your company on a car is very popular. Startups and solid companies give stickers to their employees and every leasing car (which is the majority there) has a small company sticker. A boss of one of the companies I worked for tried to save money on the stickers and rejected his employees' requests to buy stickers. He maybe saved 100$ all together but deprived his employees of the feeling of pride of the company. I'm sure each of us could have worked at least 15 minutes more productively and easily return the "invested" money.

We should create and find opportunities to make people we work and live with being proud of what they have, especially when they deserved it.

Technorati tags: proud, Israel, GA