Essays: Sharing Tradition

(a) Frank LaPena

'Sharing Tradition' is an essay by Frank LaPena, a Native American (Wintu) writer and artist, in which he describes how traditions are passed on and shared within his community.

In the essay Sharing Tradition, Frank LaPena, a Native American (Wintu) artist and writer, uses "sharing tradition" to mean passing on a community's culture, including its stories, songs, dances, ceremonies, beliefs and ways of living, from one generation to the next through participation and everyday practice.

• Tradition is lived, not stored. It is shared by taking part in ceremonies, listening to elders and practising the arts, not just by reading about them.
• It is a two-way exchange. Elders give knowledge, and the young keep it alive by receiving, practising and passing it on.
• It builds identity and belonging. Through shared stories and rituals, people learn who they are and what they owe to the community and the land.
• It adapts over time. Traditions continue by being renewed by each generation, not by staying frozen.

Sharing tradition therefore means keeping culture alive by living it together.

In the essay Sharing Tradition, Frank LaPena shows that elders are the living link between a community's past and its future. Their role in preserving and transmitting cultural traditions can be seen in four ways.

1. Keepers of memory. Elders carry the stories, songs, ceremonies and beliefs of the community in their minds. Much of this is oral and unwritten, so it survives only as long as they remember and tell it.
2. Teachers. Elders pass knowledge on to the young by telling stories, performing and explaining ceremonies, and guiding children to take part. Learning happens through example and participation, not formal schooling.
3. Interpreters of meaning. They explain why a ritual, dance or story matters, so that tradition is not an empty form but is understood and valued.
4. Models of values. By their conduct, they teach respect for people, the community and the natural world, giving tradition its moral strength.

If the young do not listen to elders or share in their traditions, the chain breaks and the culture can be lost. For the author, the survival of tradition depends on a living relationship between elders and the young.

Balancing Tradition and Modern Life

In "Sharing Tradition," the writer shows how cultural knowledge passes from grandparents to parents to children, and warns that this chain breaks when the young stop listening. Yet the essay does not ask us to live in the past. It asks us to carry the past forward. For young people today, the real task is not choosing between tradition and modernity but finding a way to hold both.

The first step is understanding what tradition actually is. It is not a set of rigid rules but a living inheritance of skills, stories, songs, and values. A grandmother's folk song and a farmer's knowledge of the monsoon both carry wisdom that no textbook can replace. When we treat tradition as a museum piece, we freeze it; when we treat it as a tool, we can use it.

Modern life, however, pulls us in many directions. Studies, jobs, social media, and migration to cities leave little time for elders. The essay's answer is simple: sharing does not require long hours. A weekly phone call to a grandparent, recording a story on a phone, or learning a recipe during a festival keeps the chain alive. Technology, often seen as tradition's enemy, can actually be its ally.

Respect for tradition also means questioning it honestly. Some customs, such as those that discriminate against women or lower castes, deserve to change. True respect is not blind imitation but thoughtful continuation, keeping what is valuable and reforming what is unjust.

In my own experience, my grandmother taught me to make sel roti during Tihar. I later filmed the process and shared it online, and relatives abroad thanked me. Tradition survived because I adapted it.

In short, young people can balance tradition and modern life by treating culture as a conversation between generations, not a command from the past. We honour our roots best when we let them grow.

The main idea of Jo Goodwin Parker's essay is that poverty is not just a lack of money but a harsh, humiliating and hopeless condition that steals a person's dignity, health and future, and that comfortable people misunderstand it. The main idea is implicit. The writer never states it in a single sentence, and we infer it from the vivid details of hunger, dirt, sickness and shame that she describes.

I agree with Steve Jobs that you need to love what you do in order to be great at it.

First, love gives the energy to keep going. Great work needs years of effort, practice and failure. A person who loves the work will keep going through boredom and setbacks, while someone who does it only for a salary tends to quit or settle for being average.

Second, passion leads to quality. When we care about our work, we pay attention to details, keep learning and want to improve on our best. Jobs's own life shows this: his obsession with design and simplicity made Apple's products special.

Third, work takes up a large part of life. If we spend most of our waking hours at a job we dislike, we feel unhappy and unfulfilled, however much we earn. As Jobs says, the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what we believe is great work.

However, loving one's work does not always come at once. Sometimes people find their passion through trying many things, and while searching they must do the best they can. Even so, in the long run great achievement comes from love for the work. So I agree with Jobs.

According to Parker, poverty is a daily, physical and emotional struggle. It is living in a dirty, cold house, being hungry and sick with no money for medicine, and going without proper clothes, food or schooling for one's children. It is also being treated with contempt, losing hope and seeing no way out. In short, poverty is a state in which one is made to feel less than human.