Cultural Heritage
We increasingly live in a time and place where we wish our ethnic origins to be irrelevant, a place where they sometimes actually are, and a place where actively avoiding consideration of them is commonly considered a proper goal.
In getting to know someone well, I am always intensely interested in their personal and family history, and sometimes disturbed by the fact that few share this interest and are often surprised by it. The differences in how people react to revealing this aspect of themselves differ markedly between new immigrants who are generally thrilled to describe their distant home and culture, first generation settlers, many of whom display 2 different ways of relating and aren’t always comfortable displaying both to the same person, second generation settlers who often display a fond yet distant nostalgia for their grandparent’s stories, and those whose nationality and primary culture remains singular beyond their living memory.
In forming relationships, and learning to comprehend another’s point of view, cultural background can often provide as many ‘aha’ moments as current or past life experiences, in business as well as in friendships.
My own heritage determines who I am in many ways. Although I was born here, both my parents came (separately) from the Soviet Union after WWII. My first language was Russian, which I still speak a bit and also read and write.
Communism is anathema to me, as I was raised in a shadow of my grandmother’s and mother’s experiences of persecution and paranoia, the force-feeding of dogma, and a KGB that took people away in the night. I value liberty and rebel against authoritarianism, and though my nature is egalitarian I prefer a meritocracy within a free market system. These beliefs could arguably be somewhat different, based on my nature and life experiences, but yet remain inextricably linked to my immersion from infancy in the effect of a political system on my people and their culture.
I have been told that I have a Russian soul, with its brooding darkness balanced by a passion for brilliant pageantry. Although I am neither a spendthrift nor a miser, extravagance in others delights rather than disturbs me, and I am also deeply respectful of the motivation of those who pinch pennies.
I sang Russian lullabies to my sons, although they and their father spoke not a word of the language, and I was drawn, in studying the history of art and design, to the Paris of the early 20th century and Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes.
I remain first a Canadian with American tendencies (for a variety of reasons). People I have come to know well, though, have definitely understood me better within the context of historical facts such as the few I’ve mentioned, the same way that I have seen others more clearly within the context of theirs.
In today’s social and business world, what we call the free world, anyway, ethnic origin matters less and less, and the internet advances that development by further leaps and bounds. Many people nevertheless still go out of their way to associate with their own kind, because they understand each other easily. Encountering many of our rich and varied cultural heritages, though, remains a source of delight for me and a way of understanding better every one I interact with.
What are some of the ways in which your own, or your family’s, heritage contributed to the person you have become? Have friends from different cultural backgrounds broadened your own horizons? Or do you wish for, perhaps, a utopian ideal of one people?
