culture, songs, and presents.

Every community has a culture.  Every place has a culture.  Every environment has a culture.

We breathe it like air, without understanding.

It's the way we interact with our friends, our coworkers, our bosses, our teachers, our enemies, and our neighbors.

Most times, the quality of the air is dependent on the people that we stand next to.  We interact with culture based on the norms that have been decided by those people.  

I understand that.  I respect that.  I live in that.

But, if the culture is decided by the people standing next to me, then I can help to decide it, too.  

I am, in the end, standing next to someone else...

Being in Israel, in this hut, with these people, has given me the gift of presence.  I've been reminded that slow, whole, intentional life is a practice that takes deliberate concentration. 

Every. Single. Moment. Of. The. Day. 

And that presence, that authenticity of that moment, gives me the freedom to be whole.  To be fully present.

There's a safety when you can look into someone's eyes and know that they are with you, that they get you.  That they aren't waiting for the next thing, the next moment, the next anything, but that just being where they are is enough.  

That kind of presence is rare.  It opens the door for everyone to be in the moment.

Most of the time, I usually see people's eyes in the reflections of their phones.  I'm sure mine have been reflected from my own, as well.

I don't like that.  I don't like that at all.

I don't want to be that person.

It's easy here.  We all have the same conceptual framework.  We have a common language.  A shared culture.  

We have presence.

I'm more a part of that than I have ever been before.

It's the song of my heart and I found some people in a desert that were already singing it.  It was easy to join that song.

What scares me, though, is that my heart should be singing the same tune wherever my feet take me.  I don't know that it does.

I think it sings the cultural melody with the people I stand next to, instead of singing its own song.

I don't like that.  I don't like that at all.

I don't want to be that person.

I want to be the one that determines the culture.  I want to invite people to sing a better song.

I don't want it to be present when the people around me are present.  I want to establish presence as my own cultural norm, everywhere I go.

I can't do that if my heart is not in tune.  

I can't do that if I'm not present with myself.

It starts with me.  It starts with a properly ordered life.   

I want that.  I want to be that person.