Have you ever asked yourself why the Lebanese celebrate so much the victory of others?
They dance on the streets and set up fireworks at midnight if the Brazilian team wins, and they publish glowing obituaries of Swiss billionaires on their newspapers’ first pages.
In both cases the associations are dodgy: Hanging the Brazilian flag on your window for the the last month doesn’t make make you a native of Copacabana, the same way that being born in Lebanon almost ninety years ago and leaving for better pastures only make you “technically” Lebanese.
In fact, both examples are testimonies to Lebanese failures: The failure to get our national team to the world cup and the failure to retain our best and brightest.
But we don’t care, we take pride nonetheless. I’m sure there’s a psychological explanation out there; what is it about our nagging need for greatness? Our itching desire to tell everyone how cool Lebanon is, how good our Hummus is, how gorgeous our women are, how skilled our doctors, how breathtaking our nature, how rich and successful our billionaires and how fancy our parties are. Why do we do that?
..And when we think we’re not great at something? Easy, we just appropriate the greatness of others..
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Hello, my name is Mustapha and I've been blogging about Lebanese society, business and politics since February 2005.
It’s the failure indeed!!
I’ve always thought it’s a failure to the Lebanese not a source of pride to see successful people of Lebanese descendants abroad..We failed to keep them..failed to offer them the appropriate environment so they could excel in their country!!
It is good to be proud if something of importance to the world and (wo)mankind has been achieved. E.g. a new medicine, a better recipe of Hummus, technological inventions to protect our nature etcetera.
But it will only be of significance if you are also able to admit your failures, the rotten attitude of some of your citizens, the existing senseless hatred against others, the lack of respect for nature, the not wanting to technologically improve, etcetera.
Because realizing that there are short-comings, makes you want to overcome them and perhaps will guarantee more success.
Don’t, however, give up one bit. As Thomas Edison said:
“”After we had conducted thousands of experiments on a certain project without solving the problem, one of my associates, after we had conducted the crowning experiment and it had proved a failure, expressed discouragement and disgust over our having failed to find out anything. I cheerily assured him that we had learned something. For we had learned for a certainty that the thing couldn’t be done that way, and that we would have to try som other way.”"
Just keep in mind that you are doing and saying stuff for the better of (wo)mankind. For everyone in the world.
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