by Lorraine Viade
There are many definitions of the word culture. The free dictionary online offers a myriad of choices. The first refers to the arts, beliefs, customs, institutions, and other products of human work and thought considered as a unit. There are others, but today, I want to focus on the term as it impacts our interactions with other people. Cultural awareness, sensitivity, or humility is to be open and curious about how any definition of culture directly impacts us. We strive to respect the people we work with.
It is essential to know not only if their ancestry, ethnicity, or affiliation falls into one or more cultural groups, but how another person experiences that culture. We also need to know that for ourselves.
There are stereotypes for many cultural groups there is no stereotype that defines any single person. Each person represents a unique constellation of experiences in a specific human being with a unique personality. So, how do we get to know someone’s culture in a respectful and meaningful way?
We become detectives. We want to know the Who, What, When Where, How and Why someone does, says or believes what they do. We maintain a curious, non-judgmental, and objective stance that does not assume that we know anything. We are here to learn about each other and that is where engagement begins. Figuring out our own pre-conceived biases, notions, ideas about a particular culture while enhancing our understanding of the person in front of us is the goal of engagement.
Trust means setting aside what we think we know and learning what we need to know about the people around us. How else can we ever hope to understand anything about them? Listening to someone else’s story, we relate to the things we share, learn about, and celebrate the unique differences, and create new avenues of communication and in that experience, we come to know each other. This is the foundation of health and the soil out of which healing grows. Discovering Who we are—together.
