The Importance Of Family Traditions

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My parents come from two significantly different backgrounds. My mother hailed from the slopes of rural Switzerland while my father was a military child growing up in a multitude of places, but mainly, from the East coast. My parents tried to pass on elements of their childhood traditions onto my sister and I. This created a very unique new family tradition which mainly emphasized values of punctuality, the appreciation of nature, and the importance of democracy. One of the major three ideas of my families tradition is punctuality, it is the difference between showing you respect someone else or that you don 't. I remember many times where we were early to someone 's house, so we waited around the corner so as not to arrive early and …show more content…
My parents did not hide the fact that they were the in charge if the household and thus had the final say in everything. That being said, I took full advantage of democracy every possible chance I got. Usually this would be in the form of convincing my father or my sister to vote in my favour. I would do this by offering favours, such as chores, for my sister while I tried to show my father how his idea was closer to mine than any of the other possible options. I also learned the extremely good value of loopholes through this. I would always leave a couple loose ends in the offers for doing chores for my sister. I typically would not take advantage of these loopholes in the fear the army sister might realize what was going on and stop making deals with me. I typically would only use these loose ends whenever I was feeling extremely lazy. I influenced this aspect of my family tradition so much, that in the end, my parents had to forbid me from making deals with my …show more content…
While it comes from both sides of my family, it mainly derives from my mother 's side as she grew up in the mountains of Switzerland on a farm with extremely active parents. To this day, they still try going on a hike every week and not just a short one, sometimes even day long hikes. My father 's side definitely grew up outdoors, his father worked for the military so they would move quite often and he would usually join outside sports such as rugby in order to make friends. My mother would try to make sure that my sister and I would be outside as much as possible since she saw how it helped to make her into the person she is and wanted the same for me. We always had an outdoor garden where we would grow herbs and vegetables. This garden allowed to show the benefits of caring for nature, that, among other things, it could lead to direct edible benefits. A main feature in our garden was a compost bin that my father would use to give nutrient rich dirt to the plants as well as to teach us about the ecosystem and how everything is connected. Interacting with nature has helped me to grow fond of it and better appreciate it. I express this appreciation of nature by just walking out in nature, be it rain, shine, day, or night. Walking outside and breathing in the fresh air helps me to stay focused and overall relax.I have passed this love onto a few of my friends. I ended up in a national park an hour

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