horizon
Have you had these experiences until you are more sophisticated than you think
© BullRun / Adobe Stock
Do you prefer reading romcoms to classics and are you more interested in Taylor Swift than Beethoven? That has nothing to say about the breadth of your horizon. If you can say these things about yourself, you are quite cultivated.
In the original sense of the word, culture means “care, processing, ordering”. The term comes from the Latin “cultura” and has retained its narrower, original meaning, for example in the compound word agriculture: “care of the soil”.
Today we usually use the term culture to describe either the sum of the customs, traditions, architecture, religion, language, intellectual history of a certain group of people: Swedish culture, Western culture, Polynesian culture. Or we use the word to denote certain goods and products that humans have produced: art, music, literature, food.
However we understand the term, culture is something that is particularly strong in humans and has a particularly great meaning. There are certain ants that grow mushrooms, and birds trill in different dialects depending on the region. But no animal that we know cultivates its habitat or its reality of life in such a drastic way as humans.
But what makes you People from what we call cultured? We usually use the attribute for people who we experience as particularly educated in certain areas such as art or literature. And maybe as particularly eloquent. But once we are more consistent with our use of the term, we should actually take the concept further and say: Cultivated people are people with a cultivated, well-ordered mind. Your inner field does not lie fallow, but has been carefully cultivated. In order to be able to say that about someone, that person does not necessarily have to have read Mayakovsky and recognize Robert Schumann. The following experiences of a person also testify to a cultivated mind.
If you have had these experiences, you are more cultured than you think
1. Learned a foreign language
In Germany, as in many other countries, it is now taken for granted that we at least learn English in school – after all, and fortunately. Foreign languages show us that we can see and organize the world in a different way than we learn to do with our native language. It is true that English and German are quite similar, which is why we do not benefit quite as much as, for example, school children in China who take English lessons. But at least we learn, for example, that we can organize time in different ways or that a person designation does not have to say anything about the sex of the person designated. And if you are interested in languages and if you want to continue cultivating your own spirit with this fruit, you can learn Spanish, Turkish or Chinese as a German-speaking person.
2. Enjoyed a work of art
Whether it’s a painting, a photograph, a play, a song, a film or a book, anyone who is able to appreciate a work of art and feel connected to the person who produced it obviously has a cultivated personality Spirit. To see in a piece of art more than a mere object, to appreciate it even if it serves no purpose, requires a certain sense, a sensitivity to aesthetics and its meaning and value. This receptivity is not a matter of course, but results from nurturing the inner attitude.
3. Participated in another culture
Have you ever eaten with chopsticks? Or with your hands? Celebrated a festival you didn’t remember from your childhood, or covered your hair or skin while touring a church? Opening up to foreign customs allows us to understand that there are many different, equal ways of life and ways of dealing with the world and our fellow human beings. It cultivates us, expands our horizons – and enables us to decide more freely how we want to live ourselves.
4. Reflecting on yourself and consciously changing
It always takes a cultivated mind to think about ourselves, to question our behavior, to make conscious decisions and even to change ourselves. After all, we cannot think about emptiness. Admittedly, over wasteland or a desert, but probably not for very long. At the latest when we consciously decide to do something of our own conviction, when we develop a concept for ourselves, when we imagine a person we would like to be, we cultivate our inner field, which should not be underestimated is. After all, it creates the breeding ground for every additional field that we till.
Source used: hackspirit.com