I’d like to look at my upbringing through a psychological lens because I believe that someone’s personal experiences and how they handled them tells a lot about a person. When looking at my upbringing, the paths that I have taken have been pretty consistent with my personality rather than previous personal experiences.
After reading, Gunner and Sweet “The Rhetorical Uses of Critical Frames”, I feel like he spends a lot of time thinking about patterns based off of cultural values. In my own personal experiences with having to deal with decisions based off of cultural value, the one that has stood out to me the most in my years is had been my decision to not get a tattoo. The reason for this is because I am Jewish and my parents have always disapproved of the idea. Even though I have not gotten any tattoos, my brother as gotten many and will continue to get more. This is the only instance where I find culture to be stopping me from doing something and even in this case, I’m still planning on getting tattoos, it’s just a matter when I am mentally prepared for it.
The more I look into any specific paths that my life has taken to this point, I keep getting the same conclusions. I pursue my passions no matter where they take me and I’m always open for an adventure so I end up in all different kinds of places. A prime example of this is my passion for elephants. I flew to Thailand to became an elephant trainer after my grandmother introduced them to me at a very young age. Wherever she or I would travel to a new destination, we would get a little elephant figure from that place to add to her collection. I went to Thailand with a group of around 40 strangers which I met at the airport for this great journey to become elephant trainers all because of the obsession for elephants which stemmed from my grandmother.
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