I love the food, the music, the language, the clothes, the stories, the little things that probably look insignificant to someone who didn’t grow up around them. I love the things that immediately make me feel at home. I love hearing a song from years ago and suddenly remembering an entire version of myself. I love the smell of food being cooked in a kitchen I’ve known my whole life. I love the expressions that don’t quite translate into English because they were never meant to.

I love the ordinary parts.

And maybe that is how I know it’s love.

Because loving your culture isn’t always about putting it on display. Sometimes, it is simply knowing that a particular dish tastes like childhood, it is speaking your language badly but refusing to stop speaking it. Sometimes it is hearing a song that your parents used to play and feeling something in your chest before you even realise why.

Culture lives in those tiny, almost invisible things. And yet, I think we live in a time where culture can very easily become something we perform.

I wonder whether we can become so concerned with proving that we love our culture that we forget to actually live it. Because culture isn’t supposed to be a costume we put on when people are watching. It exists when nobody is watching too. It exists in the way you greet someone older than you.

In the way you are expected to bring food when visiting someone’s home.

In the way your family argues for three hours and then sits down to eat together.

In the phrases you use without thinking.

In the things your mother does that you swore you’d never do and then catch yourself doing anyway.

In the stories you have heard so many times that you could practically tell them yourself.

Culture is messy. It contains contradictions. It contains things we adore and things we question. There are traditions I would protect with my whole heart, and there are traditions I don’t want to carry into the next generation. And I think both things can be true. You can love where you come from without pretending it is perfect.

I don’t want my culture to exist only in photographs.

I want it to exist in my habits.

In my home.

In the way I speak.

In the food I make.

In the stories I tell.

In the things I teach.

In the things I choose to change.

I want to know my culture deeply enough that I don’t have to perform it.

The older I get, the more I realize that every person is a product of countless people around them. Before we learn to think independently, we inherit a language we didn’t invent, values we didn’t choose and knowledge that has been passed down through generations. Our families shape us, our communities influence us and even the strangers we meet leave traces in the way we see the world. Every version of ourselves is built on foundations laid by other people.

Aristotle famously described human beings as “political animals” meaning that we are naturally meant to live in communities. I think he understood something that modern culture often forgets: our identity is not something we create from scratch. It develops through our relationships with others.

Even when people decide to reject the beliefs they grew up with, they rarely become completely independent. They simply adopt different ideas, different philosophies or different communities. A person who leaves one worldview usually enters another. We are constantly influenced by people around us, whether we recognize it or not.

As an Ethiopian, this has never felt like a radical idea to me. Community has always seemed more fundamental than individuality. Long before I understood philosophy, I understood that a person’s life was connected to the lives around them. Looking back, I think that intuition shaped the way I see almost everything.

If this is true about who we are, it must also be true about what we achieve.

Whenever someone succeeds, the story is usually told through individual effort. We hear about the sleepless nights, the risks, the persistence and the resilience. Those stories deserve to be told because success almost always requires them. But they are only one chapter of a much larger story.

Every successful person has relied on people they may never even meet. The philosopher John Rawls argued that many of the advantages we enjoy our talents, the families we are born into and the opportunities available to us are matters of luck rather than moral achievement. Whether or not one agrees with all of Rawls’s philosophy, his observation raises an uncomfortable question: if so much of what enables our success was never earned in the first place, how much of that success can we honestly claim as ours alone?

This is why I’ve come to see wealth differently.

Money is often treated as the ultimate proof of personal achievement. I don’t see it that way. Wealth reflects effort, but it also reflects everything that made that effort possible. It represents years of support, visible and invisible, from people and institutions that rarely receive any recognition.

For that reason, I don’t think giving back to society should be viewed as an act of generosity. Generosity implies that helping others is optional. I see it as a form of responsibility. If my success depends on a community, then contributing to that community is simply acknowledging the truth about how I got here.

Perhaps this is where I differ from the way success is commonly understood today. I don’t believe success ends when we achieve our goals. I think it reaches its fullest meaning when it creates opportunities for someone else. The value of wealth is not measured only by what it allows us to own, but also by what it enables us to build together.

After all, none of us arrived here alone. It seems only fair that we make sure we don’t leave everyone else behind.

The United States tells stories about freedom. Britain tells stories about empire. China tells stories about civilization. Japan tells stories about resilience.

Ethiopia tells stories about history.

Spend enough time with Ethiopians in their country, in the diaspora or online and you’ll notice that conversations often drift backward. The Kingdom of Aksum. Emperor Tewodros II. Menelik II. Adwa. Haile Selassie. The Derg. The federal era. Every political debate seems to arrive carrying a thousand years of baggage.

To outsiders, this can look like an obsession. But is it?

Ethiopia is unusual.

Few countries can claim a continuous state tradition stretching back millennia. Its written history predates many modern nations. Ancient churches carved into mountains, centuries-old manuscripts and royal chronicles remain part of everyday cultural identity.

For many Ethiopians, history is inherited. The problem begins when history stops being a teacher and becomes a battlefield. Modern Ethiopian politics is filled with competing historical narratives.

One group remembers liberation. Another remembers oppression. One celebrates empire. Another remembers conquest. The same historical event can symbolize pride for one community and pain for another. As a result, political arguments often become arguments about whose version of history deserves recognition.

Instead of debating housing, education, or economic growth, conversations sometimes become endless attempts to settle disputes that began generations, or even centuries ago.

I don't think history is a problem.

Rather I imagine history as a compass. It tells us where we’ve been, how we arrived here, and what mistakes we should never repeat. The problem begins when the compass becomes an anchor.

A nation cannot move forward if it is forever trying to relitigate yesterday.

This is not unique to Ethiopia. Every society wrestles with its past. Americans still debate the Civil War. The British continue to argue about the legacy of empire. Across the world, history remains contested because memory shapes identity.

But Ethiopia’s history is exceptionally long, exceptionally rich and exceptionally present. It is impossible to understand the country without understanding its past.

Yet it is equally impossible to build its future by living only in its past.

In my opinion, the questions that will define Ethiopia over the next fifty years are not the same questions that defined it five hundred years ago.

How do we educate a rapidly growing population? How do we create meaningful jobs? How do we strengthen institutions that serve every citizen? How do we harness technology, investment and innovation without losing the traditions that make Ethiopia unique?

These are not questions history can answer on its own. They require imagination. The greatest tribute we can pay to those who came before us is not to argue endlessly about their legacy, but to build a future worthy of it.

History gave Ethiopia its roots.

The future will determine its branches.

What do you guys think?

እንብላ is one of them.

The dictionary gives you ‘let us eat’. Accurate enough. But the phrase carries a different weight when you hear it in an Ethiopian home.

You might have dropped in for coffee. You might have insisted you’ve already eaten. It doesn’t matter. If lunch or dinner is on the table, someone will almost certainly say, ‘እንብላ’.

The invitation comes naturally. No one pauses to calculate whether there is enough food. Someone shifts their chair to make room. The meal expands to fit one more person.

As you probably know, many Ethiopians eat from a shared platter rather than individual plates. But what I want to write is not about the custom itself. It's the kind of attention it asks of you.

While you are eating, it is common to notice when someone’s injera is running low. You see which stew/ወጥ they’ve been avoiding and which one they keep returning to. You know when to slide another piece of injera towards them, or when to look up and say, ‘ብላ’ or ‘ብዪ’ which means Eat.

Eating from a shared platter trains perception. It makes care observable and habitual. No need to ask if someone needs more as you are already watching.

This implies that ‘እንብላ’ was never only about the food. Food satisfies hunger. ‘እንብላ’ turns ‘my meal’ into ‘our meal.’

The invitation is more than saying simply, Come and eat. It is Come and sit with us. Make room. Shift your chair. Eat from the same injera. Share in the same conversation, the same laughter, the same silence.

In that sense, the meal is more than the point. What matters is that no one eats alone when they don’t have to. The table expands before the food does.

That’s why the word carries more than its literal translation. It isn’t just an invitation to eat. It’s an invitation to belong.

Not just let us eat.

Let us make room for one another.

Only later did I realise that this wasn’t universal.

In many places, grief is deeply private. People ask for space. Visits are carefully arranged. Support often comes in the form of messages: “Let me know if you need anything.”

In Ethiopia, people rarely wait to be asked.

They come because grief is not considered something anyone should carry alone. For days, sometimes longer, the bereaved are relieved of ordinary responsibilities. Others cook. Others serve guests. Others make phone calls, organise funeral arrangements, receive visitors and ensure there is always someone in the house. The practical work of living is shared so that those closest to the loss have permission to simply mourn.

Presence becomes its own language.

You don’t have to know exactly what to say. In fact, there often aren’t words that can soften loss. What matters is that you’re there. You sit. You pray. You cry together. You stay long enough that silence itself becomes a form of companionship.

I’ve often thought that this reveals something deeper about Ethiopian culture. We don’t only celebrate together; we suffer together.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve come to see these practices less as only tradition for tradition’s sake and more as a philosophy of care. They say that love doesn’t end when someone dies. It continues in the people who show up, who bring food, who stay late into the evening, who return the next day and the day after.

Perhaps that’s what our mourning traditions have been teaching me all along.

That grief is too heavy for one person to carry. That love doesn’t end with death, it continues in the people who show up.

In Ethiopia, we honour the dead by refusing to abandon the living.

But there’s one thing I don’t think we talk about enough.

In Ethiopia, A cup of coffee can mean, “I love you.”

It can mean, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

It can mean, “Welcome to my home.”

It can mean, “Congratulations.”

It can mean, “Let’s put this behind us.”

It can mean, “Goodbye. Travel safely.”

Making coffee gives people permission to sit together without rushing to fill the silence. It slows the pace of life just enough for grief to be shared, joy to be celebrated, disagreements to soften, and relationships to deepen.

Perhaps that’s why the same ceremony can carry so many different meanings. The coffee creates the space where emotion can be expressed.

Cultures survive because they preserve habits that make life more human. The Ethiopian coffee ceremony is one of those habits. It protects something that’s becoming increasingly rare: unhurried time with one another.

It teaches patience in a world of instant gratification, presence in a world of distraction, and community in a world that often rewards individualism.

Maybe that’s why the ceremony has endured for centuries. It continues to give us something we still need.

The world will continue to change. Our technology will evolve, our schedules will become busier and our attention will become harder to hold.

I hope we never become too busy to make coffee for one another.

Because sometimes the greatest gift we can offer is our presence.

This article offers a brief overview of some key Ethiopian oral traditions and why they still matter today.

Qene:

Qene is a sophisticated form of oral poetry associated with the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. A qene poet creates verses with two layers of meaning:

• The apparent meaning (“sem” wax)

• The hidden meaning (“werq” gold)

Listeners are expected to uncover the deeper message, making qene one of Ethiopia’s most intellectually demanding oral traditions.

Oromo Mammaaksa (Proverbs)

The Oromo people have an extensive tradition of proverbs called mammaaksa. These proverbs are used in conflict resolution, leadership discussions, and everyday conversation. Many are tied to the values of the Oromo social system and worldview.

Azmari Tradition

The Azmaris are traditional Ethiopian singer poets, often compared to bards. They perform improvised songs accompanied by instruments such as the masenqo. An Azmari can praise, criticize, joke about, or comment on social and political issues through song. These performances are often rooted in Amhara cultural traditions, where Azmaris have long played an important role in social gatherings, celebrations, and community commentary.

Goyla

Goila is a traditional Tigrayan form of sung poetry and performance. It is often performed at weddings, festivals, and community gatherings. Singers may praise individuals, comment on social issues, express love, or recount historical events. Much of it is improvised, requiring considerable skill.

Why these still Matter?

In a modern world shaped by digital speed and constant information, oral traditions offer something still deeply relevant.

Ethiopian oral culture emphasizes:

• Deep listening instead of quick consumption

• Interpretation instead of surface reading

• Community memory instead of individual isolation

These oral cultures provide a unique way to experience togetherness without feeling overwhelmed.

So my question for you:

How do we preserve meaning when so much of our communication is becoming fast and fragmented?