Religious background matters for emotional fulfillment
Hello!
Living in New York City, we run into a lot of people have different kinds of backgrounds, culture and values gathered from all over the world.
In my occupation, I am given opportunities to think about religions and our emotional well-being in depth.
And I found myself not so religious though I know that my religious background influenced on my values.
I was born in a very small town in Japan far from Tokyo and my family wasn’t really particularly religious.
I knew that my values are out of standard in a way in the US long time ago and became more aware of my uniqueness since I had a relationship with my ex-husband.
He was an American of third generation grew up in the middle class family in the South.
Of course, you have different values when you are from different country and especially Japan is such a unique country in the sense such as conservativeness and religious backgrounds.
I grew up not knowing about my own religions as a child even though I had first hand experiences in rituals and ceremonies.
In Japan, Buddhism and Shinto are main religions and they uniquely co-exist and often times we don’t distinguish one from another in our daily life.
Information and knowledge in depth of my own religions were earned actually since I lived in the US in order to explain my background to my friends.
It was very interesting to know my own religions in depth anyway.
In the Master program of Social Work, my focus was on clinical social work, which was given to students who wanted to be a therapist.
And I had opportunities to learn how much influences I had from my religious backgrounds on my values and mind sets.
I must tell you that I