Why do I fly International Flags?

I’m always amazed at the variety of hobbies and passions that people have.  I’ve often said that if someone is passionate about a subject, I can talk with them forever.  In the QTR philosophy paper I wrote about a philosophy that I called “Retire Now”.  Retire Now is a concept of choosing to do the things that people do when they are retired, but to do them today and not wait until retirement.  Two of the things that I found that retired people were doing when I interviewed them were:

Do more community service work

Do more of my favorite hobbies

I want to share one of my community service projects and what has also turned into one of my hobbies or a passion project.   I have been a member of Rotary since I was 22 years old.  While in Rotary, one of the projects that I was attracted to was the Rotary Youth Exchange Program which is a year long exchange program for students who are 15.5 – 18 years old who spend a year abroad, attend high school and live with a host family.  When a Rotary friend of mine who was very involved with youth exchange for many years passed away from cancer, I made a commitment to myself at his memorial service to assist 250 students to experience and learn from a youth exchange year abroad.  By the time I resigned from the program I had helped about 400 students and I have these friends from around the world in my Facebook account, although many of them no longer look at their accounts nor do they see my messages to them.  It is a joy to stay in touch with them and to visit with them when I am traveling or when they are visiting California. 

Why do I fly the international flags?

I fly the flags on the independence days of the countries that I have flags. The reason I fly them is a reminder that all humans worldwide desire freedom and independence. It isn’t just American humans that desire their human freedoms, but all humans have these fundamental desires.

One of the main purposes of the Rotary Youth Exchange program is to promote world peace. How that is done, is high school students from around the world spend a year abroad in another country. And once they spend a year abroad, they become world citizens. They find out that even though we have different cultural norms, we are really more alike than different. And from that realization comes the quote from a former Rotary International President who said, “If every 17 year old were to go on exchange, we would have world peace.”

So, the reason we fly the flags of the different countries on the day of their independence, is to have a reminder of the worldwide March to freedom. Sometimes it feels we are moving backward in this march (think Ukraine or the reversal of Roe v Wade), but I trust that the fundamental desire for human rights will win and prevail over time. The trend is undeniable, even with setbacks.

After you get past desires like a better job, a new car or whatever trendy item, you find that humans really yearn for:

Peace

Belonging

Freedom

Love

Happiness

And that is why we fly the flags. It’s not just us who appreciate our independence…it’s an acknowledgment of everyone’s independence and freedom.

Why do I have flags?

I have around 100 flags from different countries because of the Rotary Youth Exchange program in our district. We have had a fairly robust program for the past 40 years, and I ran the inbound program as a volunteer for ~ 15 years. The students were here for a full year during their high school years and every year we had a program at our Rotary District Conference called the “Parade of Flags” where that year’s students would march in with their flag and would be introduced to the Rotarians while the program was described about how exchange programs promote peace worldwide. So, over the years we have accumulated a bunch of flags, and I ended up being the storage vault of these flags.

Our Atlas at home that has been signed by Rotary Youth Exchange Students:

We have an Atlas at home that has been signed by 100’s of Rotary Youth Exchange Students from around the world. They sign their name, put in the year of their exchange, and draw a line to their home city. The Atlas is from the early 1980’s and so the Atlas has Yugoslavia, not Croatia. But I can’t buy a new Atlas…because of the signatures. So sometimes, the students look at the Atlas and say, “hey, my country isn’t here?” I tell them that the land is the same, and in the fight for freedom worldwide, the boarders change sometimes. Also, from space, looking at the earth, there are no boarders. Just earth, where humans live. The march to freedom continues.

I share this to show that hobbies and joy can come from many different places.  I never expected to have so much fun, meaning, memories and joy when I started volunteering for the Rotary Youth Exchange Program, and yet it has turned out to be some of my favorite memories and one of my continued hobbies.

Cheers and QTR!