The Purpose Behind AnthroPerspectives

AnthroPerspectives has been a long time coming.  With a lifelong connection to reading and writing, my relationship to the human story has always felt like a part of me.  During my childhood, I was an avid reader. Book after book, I delved into the lives of young girls from around the world who were experiencing such different realities, cultures and experiences.  I was always infatuated by the individual’s story, and have not gone through a phase in my life where I wasn’t using writing as a tool for reflection, imagination or understanding.  The seeds of this blog were planted even back then.

Growing up, I was immersed in a world of homeschooling and communities centered around Christianity.  After years of being raised in a fundamental baptist microculture, I was taught and developed in a way that was quite different than the outside world.  In 8th grade, our life changed and my parents sent me and my siblings to school.  This was my first exposure to the concept of culture shock.  The process of adapting to a new way of life with different norms and beliefs was difficult to experience and fascinating to reflect upon.   This further sparked my interest in understanding how we are shaped and what impacts us as people.

Later, I went on to study Anthropology.

As the study of human culture, anthropology reveals things about us as people.  It tells us what we value, and why we have these values.  It helps us to understand ourselves and each other better.  And for me, it taught me about the ingrained nature of our need for belonging.  As I examined my life and what I have learned about people, as I studied cultures and traveled parts of the world, I realized how essential belonging is to us as human beings.  Wanting to explore that further, I started AnthroPerspectives as a platform to engage people in this discussion.

By having these conversations about what makes us human,
we hope to inspire and cultivate more connection, community and belonging.

 

What I have come to this blog to do is to shine light onto that thing that makes us so human, which is our ability to, if even for a moment, put ourselves in the shoes of another.  This ability comes from our shared existence, both spatially and temporally, but also from the common essence of what it is to live as a human.   Our true bond is that we are all a part of this, we all have something to share. The purpose of this blog is to delve into a look at life through human places and spaces, communities, thoughts, food, people at their core just being people and how they got to where they are by looking at their culture, their life, and their perspectives.

AnthroPerspectives is an avenue through which we will learn about one another, and gain the tools to better understand and engage each other.  By having these conversations about what makes us human, I hope to inspire and cultivate more connection, community and belonging.   But the conversation is not just mine to have.  Whether it be through guest blogging, commenting or starting conversations with people beyond the blog, I hope that AnthroPerspectives will challenge people to think and talk about what humanity looks like and take stock of the role they play in creating the world around them.
So please, join the conversation.