2015 was a big year; huge, even. Affairs that occurred around the world blew my mind with amazing facts and events. There are many stereotypes in culture; you don’t have to think twice about it. Fitting a common stereotype, “white girl” physically clouded my mind and thoughts, and I began to believe it.  I believed our job as a stereotype was to stand back and watch culture from afar. Culture can be anything. Beliefs. Religion. Customs. It’s a prominent and key factor to living normal and successful lives. But for me, I didn’t recognize my own cultures and beliefs until recently, when I started paying close attention.

I am not a big traveler. The farthest I’ve ever gone to from my small  town is New York City, for my birthday with one of my best friends. There, I discovered the magic of corner hotdog stands, Radio City Music Hall, and culture. New York isn’t the same as traveling to Thailand or Moscow, Berlin or Rome, Paris or Tokyo, but it was different than the bubble I had grown used to over the past four years. The historic flood that rocked many towns of Colorado was the closest thing I ever had to any disaster in my humble, hippy, happy town. For some people it took the things they held closest to their heart; thank goodness my family got through it. We banded together as a town and picked up the pieces. Looking back at it now, I wish I could have seen how that was as cultural as Chinatown in New York City, or even the real China.

My small experiences from lakes in Iowa to mountains in Utah help me to understand the relationship between community and culture. Every time I step out of my house in my favorite boots to go to school, I am adding to the mush pot of cultures my town has been brewing since it was founded in 1871. Every single person’s experiences become part of them, which becomes part of us. That’s what culture is: the partart of us that believe something so strongly we feel we can share it with everyone and let them learn and possibly develop. Culture is the misfits who don’t conform to the standards of everyday life in their town, city, state, country, or even continent because they believe so much in whatever their culture is.

Culture is differences. It’s rebellion and devotion and everything inbetween. Culture is everything and nothing depending on what you choose it to be. After 13 years of not only neglecting to see culture, but not accepting it, I finally brought it into my life. My culture is my mom’s Southern cooking and my Dad’s Irish heritage. My culture is being part of the community I live in. Culture is what you believe in, but it is also what you believe it is. Sure, maybe I haven’t swum in the sacred water of the River Ganges, traveled the Silk Road through Tajikistan, or danced at Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, but I HAVE experienced culture. Culture to you is different for you, different for me, even different for the New Yorkers I met that December, but at least now I know that. Culture is part of me.