Personal Culture
I grew up in northern Idaho in a family of seven kids. For those of you who don't know much about northern Idaho, it looks like this:
Yep. It's paradise. :)
On the downside, though, it's also not very racially diverse; this is mostly because there are more trees than people, but for one reason or another, I grew up mostly interacting with Caucasian, conservative people who's culture was relatively the same. Of course there were differences, person to person and family to family, but there wasn't a huge amount of diversity.
This is one of the many reasons I'm grateful that I was raised in a large family, because I got an incredible amount of exposure to personal culture that way. In our society, we talk a lot about different cultures, and, unfortunately, the clashing of cultures. It's true that cultures don't only exist in massive groups determined by race and nationality and location, though, but they do also exist within families, and they have so much to do with personal and interpersonal development. I was incredibly blessed to be raised in a family where most of the elements of our culture were positive, and the rules that were established were for out benefit, things like, "If she [your sister] doesn't like it, don't do it," and "You've got eyes, I've got eyes." (My dad would say the latter all the time in order to teach us we were capable of figuring out difficult things for ourselves; it taught me to be self reliant, and became a mental motivator to do everything in my power to figure something out before asking for help if the problem wasn't detrimental to my or someone else's safety or well-being.)
As far as other large-scale cultures are concerned, I didn't gain a lot of exposure to them until Colorado Springs, an experience that ended about a month ago. Not having been raised with exposure to many other cultures made it a little shocking for me, being plunged into a city with so much cultural diversity, but I'm grateful that that was my experience! It taught me that people with different cultures, be they family cultures or large-scale ones, have their own difficulties, known and unknown, and because of that we have no right to judge each other based on appearances when we don't know the details behind why someone is the way they are. That perspective continues to grow for me every day.
So here's my challenge, for myself and for anyone else who might be reading this: Evaluate what your family's culture is like. What's a rule, whether it's been spoken or unspoken? If you don't have your own family, what would you like your family's culture to be like? It's an intriguing thought.
Yep. It's paradise. :)
On the downside, though, it's also not very racially diverse; this is mostly because there are more trees than people, but for one reason or another, I grew up mostly interacting with Caucasian, conservative people who's culture was relatively the same. Of course there were differences, person to person and family to family, but there wasn't a huge amount of diversity.
This is one of the many reasons I'm grateful that I was raised in a large family, because I got an incredible amount of exposure to personal culture that way. In our society, we talk a lot about different cultures, and, unfortunately, the clashing of cultures. It's true that cultures don't only exist in massive groups determined by race and nationality and location, though, but they do also exist within families, and they have so much to do with personal and interpersonal development. I was incredibly blessed to be raised in a family where most of the elements of our culture were positive, and the rules that were established were for out benefit, things like, "If she [your sister] doesn't like it, don't do it," and "You've got eyes, I've got eyes." (My dad would say the latter all the time in order to teach us we were capable of figuring out difficult things for ourselves; it taught me to be self reliant, and became a mental motivator to do everything in my power to figure something out before asking for help if the problem wasn't detrimental to my or someone else's safety or well-being.)
As far as other large-scale cultures are concerned, I didn't gain a lot of exposure to them until Colorado Springs, an experience that ended about a month ago. Not having been raised with exposure to many other cultures made it a little shocking for me, being plunged into a city with so much cultural diversity, but I'm grateful that that was my experience! It taught me that people with different cultures, be they family cultures or large-scale ones, have their own difficulties, known and unknown, and because of that we have no right to judge each other based on appearances when we don't know the details behind why someone is the way they are. That perspective continues to grow for me every day.
So here's my challenge, for myself and for anyone else who might be reading this: Evaluate what your family's culture is like. What's a rule, whether it's been spoken or unspoken? If you don't have your own family, what would you like your family's culture to be like? It's an intriguing thought.
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