Fun with flags

September 16, 2022

If you travel around Holland right now you will find that farmers have taken the dutch flag and hung it upside down in protest against the dutch government. When I first saw this, I couldn't help but think about "Fun with Flags", a vlog hosted by Sheldon in the Big Bang Theory (still one of my favorite shows) and how he would interpret this.

While some people take offence that our national flag is being misused as a symbol of protest, I realised that I'm not that patriotic. A contributing factor might be that I've lived under 5 different flags over my life time.

I grew up in Holland which is a very densely populated country with not necessarily the best climate (well, that seems to be changing). People live close to one another and it is a very efficient country where communication is very direct and most of your life was spent inside well decorated buildings.

Australia helped me appreciate living outside and somehow the whole culture felt less narrow minded than what I was used to. I also adopted their main catch phrase and worry less ("no worries mate").

Moving to Ireland helped me to become more humble and polite. I noticed how my directness and opinions offended people even if they would never say that to my face. I learned to find compromises and adopted ("fair enough") as one of my main sayings.

I remember arriving in the South of France thinking that I had finally found the place where I would grow old. To this date, I still think the French know best how to appreciate all aspects of life and express their gratitude in poetic ways through an amazing language. While it is initially hard to connect with people, I discovered that investing in learning the language will help you find amazing friendships.

Seeing the big divide between rich and poor in South Africa has helped me appreciate how privileged I really am to have grown up in a country where education, safety & social security are the norm. You also see how wrong things can go if we don't find better ways to distribute wealth.

Coming back to Netherlands made me appreciate how good and well organised life in Holland really is. I also realised that every country has it's share of problems, but I'm sure that together we stand a better chance of solving todays common challenges.