Personal Notes 

A personal note - Will someone please find South African Patriotism!

Sure we get excited when a sports team wins an event, but where is the internal sense of pride in this nation? The events on Friday when a number of commuter trains were burnt out is a clear indication that there are many people who have no sense of National Pride and only focus on personal gain. The fact that unions are exploiting the boom in, and the urgency of, the construction sector to force their demands is indicative of lack of common purpose.

Every day 2010 gets closer and every day 2010 gets further away.

Unless the people of this nation can rally together and work towards a common goal that is for the good of the nation and just for a moment suspend their desire for immediate gain then I fear that 2010 will be a huge embarrassment.

I just look at the tremendous national pride of countries like Germany and Australia when they host major Inter National events and I feel that unless we, at a personal level, can get to the same level of pride then we have a problem.

Now I know that there are some who are going to say that now I am not being patriotic because I am being "negative" and they are entitled to their opinion. But unless we can identify what the problems are we cannot begin to look for solutions. We have to understand that there are no "negative" emotions or situations there are only "informative" emotions or situations. Our responsibility is to gather the information and then use it to build the situation we prefer.

So what can you do? While many of us are not in a position to control national events we are all in a position of controlling local events. And the local events that I am talking about is our own behaviour. If each one us us just took the time to evaluate our contribution to the overall picture of National Pride by asking just this one question. "If a visitor was to observe my behaviour and form an opinion of South Africa and South Africans from that observation what would that opinion be?"

You do make a difference. Please make sure that it is a positive difference.

To live your best life be true to the YOU, that you want to be.

Live up to the reputation that you want to have.