When you hear things from people who did not grow up with the same stories you grew up with, it can make you wonder how they could believe such things. But have you ever wondered how they might think about the stories you grew up with? Have you every questioned the stories you grew up with? What made you question things?

It’s probably human nature to assume that everyone was raised the same way as you were. Whatever struggles your family experienced we kind of assume are experienced by everyone. And given that for most of human history the vast majority of our species never left the town or village we were born in, why would we question the stories we were told growing up? Yes, we might have heard of strange customs practiced by strange people on the other side of the earth, but wasn’t there often a sense that we should feel sorry for those poor people on the other side of the world? Even when some of us ventured out to other places (not our village), didn’t we try to bring our customs with us and dissuade those we met from their customs to practice our customs? 

But it would seem, in my lifetime, with more people going to university and traveling and the availability of media from all over the world, that one is very likely to encounter many customs and stories and beliefs and that would naturally lead many to question the stories, customs and beliefs they were raised with. As a teenager growing up in Southern California in the 1970s I experienced challenges to the religion I had been raised with and benefitted from going to many universities to study religion and storytelling from many different points of view. I appreciate and love the stories and customs that I learned from my family as a young person, but I learned that the world is a much bigger place than I could imagine and that there was more than one way to understand the life that I had been given.  There were times when it was a struggle to hold on to the old stories while learning about the “new” ones, but that turns out to be one of the blessings of living a long life, is experiencing all the different flavors that this existence might offer. 

I hope that you are lucky enough to appreciate and cherish the old stories without be limited or defined by them. 

Source: PBS Newshour Classroom, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/classroom/2023/02/top-stories-ohio-residents-frustrated-after-toxin-exposure-news-wrap-2-17-23-student-video/