Raised by Culture

I don't have a manual for life.

So I made one out of movie quotes, rap verses, and cartoons.

That’s where I learned how to speak. How to fight. How to care.

I still quote TV shows in serious conversations.

I still hear a lyric and feel like someone finally understood me.

Pop culture raised me. And maybe that’s weird. But it’s real.

Sometimes I forget who I am.

But then a scene, a song, a stupid one-liner hits, and I remember—oh right... I’m me.

I didn’t grow up reading philosophy books. I grew up watching fictional characters wrestle with real problems. I listened to rappers turn pain into poetry. I watched animated animals teach loyalty better than most adults could. And somehow, all that stuck.

Pop culture wasn’t an escape. It was a mirror. A lifeline. A way of decoding a world that never made much sense to me. I took the pieces that felt real and held onto them like gospel. Maybe that’s not traditional—but it worked.

Now I’m older, and I still go back to those same lines, those same moments. They ground me. They remind me that I’ve always been trying to figure it out in my own way. I just didn’t have the words for it then.

Maybe you were raised the same way. Maybe not. Either way, you're allowed to make meaning out of whatever kept you going.

No deep message today.

Just a reminder that it’s okay to be built from fragments.

As long as you keep showing up with the pieces.

The Baboon Jogger from Bojack said it better than I ever could:

“It gets easier. Every day it gets a little easier. But you gotta do it every day—that’s the hard part. But it does get easier.”

Talk soon – Brincat