Click here to listen to my original song "I Break the Ice"

Some ice protects. A frozen lake lets us cross where we otherwise could not. Ice preserves food. It keeps flowers dormant until spring. It slows decay and holds life in quiet suspension. 

But some ice traps. It seals over rivers that would overwise run. It blocks birds from water. It can permanently damage cells beyond recovery.

I've been thinking lately about the invisible ice that forms between people. The kind that culture creates. Before we can speak, it begins teaching us who we are supposed to become.

Baby girls wear pink.

Baby boys wear blue.

Girls should be agreeable.

Boys should be tough.

Successful people work harder.

Good mothers sacrifice.

People of faith never question.

Strong leaders should always know what to do.

Every generation inherits these stories. Some are beautiful. Some are wise. Some deserve to be passed from parent to child like treasured heirlooms. Others quietly freeze us into shapes we never chose.

In some ways, culture can be a trap, but in some ways it isn't the enemy.

Without culture, we wouldn't know how to gather around a dinner table, comfort someone who's grieving, celebrate a wedding, or sing together in church. Culture gives us language, traditions, values, and rituals. It teaches us that our lives are connected. It reminds us that we belong to one another.

We are not meant to live alone. But belonging has a shadow. Sometimes we begin paying for acceptance with pieces of ourselves. We laugh when something isn't funny. We swallow questions because they're inconvenient. We choose careers that earn approval instead of joy. We become careful editors of our own souls, deleting every sentence that might make someone uncomfortable.

Eventually, we can forget which voice is ours.

We're in a prison without walls, but just as strong, made from invisible expectations. And eventually, we don't even notice the shackles anymore.

So how do we know whether we're living inside healthy traditions or unhealthy conformity? Here's where the freedom of awareness can come from powerful questions:

1. When I make this choice, am I acting from love or from fear?
2. Does this expectation help people flourish, or just help them fit in?
3. Can I disagree and still belong?
4. Do the people who love me make room for the whole of me, or only the agreeable parts?
5. Am I becoming more fully myself, or simply more acceptable?

Maybe the most unsettling question is this:

Have I become the very person who freezes others?

Because once we've suffered under judgment, it's surprisingly easy to begin judging in return. We replace one set of expectations with another. We trade one prison for a different one and it can be tempting to become the oppressor, we once resisted.

When we can find the courage to speak honestly while leaving enough room for someone else to speak honestly too, that's the place where real conversations begin. That's the culture I'd like to be a part of, and I'm willing to co-create.

That's where the ice begins to crack.

Those thoughts that inspired a song I recently wrote called "I Break the Ice." With this song, I hope to inspire every listener to make room in their hearts for both conviction and compassion. To chip away at our need to be uniform, and somehow at the same time melt the invisible walls of expectation that divide us.

Click here to listen.

And let the thaw of a new spring begin.