Across the vast land of the nation, culture exists in plain sight and also within the mouths of the people; it is an integral part of the varied parts of us. It’s at the core of our politics, education, marriages, sports — the list is endless, but there seems to be a toxic relationship that we hold with it.

Growth is a facet at every stage of life, but it requires that we challenge what we previously held as truth. In moving forward, we allow ourselves to shed the skin of the old for the new, moderating life better for our well-being. But it seems that, for some reason, we have trashed growth from the narrative of culture.

Culture, as said, has a powerful hold on us; what we do, say, learn, and teach. Also in our interactions with people: friendships, relationships, and business endeavors. It has an alarming hold on the affairs of most of our lives, and it looks like we are sinking into its grip.

The previous election was a major flashlight that shed light on how toxic the relationships we have with these ideas are. Stereotypes and harmful generalizations were thrown around, and such dehumanizing beliefs were justified with phrases that rang, “That’s how they have always been.”.

But it’s not just the elections; our relationships are largely influenced by such ideas as well. Love isn’t enough in a lot of cultures. You could find solace in another, but when you get home, you’re met with the 500-year-old belief that inter-tribe marriages with one particular tribe are not acceptable.

The examples exist in a list that couldn’t be completed in this article, but they live in hearts, boiling ashes to our detriment.We are held at knifepoint by ideas whose origins were crafted with a bunch of other phenomena, which today we regard as ridiculous.

The West is a good example of how much light can be shed on generational wounds; slavery was practically the norm, and tied to it was racism. If those ideas were left unquestioned, there wouldn’t be the striving for growth and protection of minority groups we see today.

Not to say that our beliefs are akin to those of slavery, but that example shows how wrong ideas can be accepted, even by a society.

Every society across time has had, relative to future generations, limited resources and information that were used to identify what could be true or not. With those limited resources, each society makes sense of what it is they would refer to as truth, but their instrument to truth was limited, and as time passed, it was important to update beliefs and instruments to create those beliefs.

New psychological research indicates that many of our practices under the canopy of culture negatively affect our well-being. But it seems familiarity has become our new home, and even with its thorns, we still sleep in its domain. We need to learn to do otherwise.

We need to Look at areas where we have normalized suffering and stagnation and ask if things can be done better. Transforming from a culture of suffering to a culture that focuses on well-being, and in doing this, we find growth, and in growth, we make our lives better.

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