Culture

Culture to me is how you grow up. The traditions that you grew up doing every day as a child and do even now as an adult. Your culture directly influences your major life decisions. In the past when my grandmother used to take care of me she would practice Buddhism, and since I was younger I didn’t understand and sometimes would bow down too. Understanding my Christianity now I look back and I don’t know why I did that, but since I’m older and understand more things I question why other people bow down to statues or why they believe in the religion they do. I mean, obviously it’s not real, but they could say the same for me and Christianity. So I would say growing up having Christianity and Buddhism exposed in my life it made me more observant of cultures and why they practice the things they do. It’s odd to see a women bowing down to a statue and lighting incense and you wonder, “Why does she do that? Isn’t that kind of pointless?” I feel confused for them, but admire how they hold close to their faith. Currently as of now my mother has been doing some research on her side of the family and made a discovery. Apparently we have some Jewish background. That was about 3 years ago, so my mother has been observing some of the Jewish holidays and exposing us to that. For example during the High Holy days we just focused on prayer and fasting. In the future, I would like to create a balanced culture. I would teach my family to not forget where we came from and that we grew up with the good Biblical morals. I would also teach them that spending time with your family is important. Having a family being close together is a good thing to have. When a family experiences a trouble period they are supposed to come together, lean on each other, and pray for one another. I would like to expose them to all cultures so they wouldn’t be too sheltered like how my parents did for me. Luckily, my family already has some good traditions we used to have get together every weekend! We would eat, watch a movie, go to games, or have a beach day! Unfortunately, due to the majority of my family living in Texas and some moving to the mainland we don’t have many cookouts anymore. In Hawaii they would take me to China Town and have breakfast with my Chinese grandparents. Then in the summer we would fly to Texas every year and they would make homemade Spanish food while my cousins and I played Lotería (spanish bingo). These things that I remember, and still do to this day is something I will hold forever close to me and keep the tradition going.