I came to the conclusion that wonderful people are made, not born — that the people I admired had achieved an unfakeable inner virtue, built slowly from specific moral and spiritual accomplishments.
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| Via richsoil.com |
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| Via livelight.org |
Nutritionists are correct when they tell us that most of us don’t need to be taking multivitamins. But that’s only because multiple vitamins have already been added to our food.
But the very processing that’s necessary to create long shelf lives destroys vitamins, among other important nutrients. It’s nearly impossible to create foods that can sit for months in a supermarket that are also naturally vitamin-rich.
And adding back vitamins after the fact ignores the issue of synergy: how nutrients work naturally as opposed to when they are isolated. A 2011 study on broccoli, for example, found that giving subjects fresh broccoli florets led them to absorb and metabolize seven times more of the anticancer compounds known as glucosinolates, present in broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables, than when glucosinolates were given in straight capsule form. The researchers hypothesized that this might be because the whole broccoli contained other compounds that helped people’s bodies put the anticancer chemicals to use.
“Intergenerational relationships in India aren’t hostile. Our teenagers don’t have angst. They don’t rebel or misbehave with their parents,” said Madhu Kishwar, a prominent feminist author and a professor at the Center for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi. “And the reason marriages in India are more stable than those in the West is because families are actively involved.”
When people asked me how old my daughters were, they would grimace at my reply. Poor you, they’d say, or, Good luck, or, at best, Don’t worry, it’ll pass, you’ll get them back eventually. Stories began to emerge in my circle of acquaintances of shouting and slammed doors and verbal abuse, of academic failure, of secrecy and dishonesty; and of darker things, of eating disorders, self-harm, sexual precocity and depression. They used to be so sweet, a friend of mine said of his daughter and son, shaking his head. I don’t know what happened. It’s like a nightmare. Another friend says, It’s as if they hate me. I walk into a room and they wince; I speak and they ball up with irritation.Considering how Indian parents don't have these issues, it's not a given that one's teenaged offspring will go berserk.
It is possible, I have discovered, to attribute an inordinate power to your children. . . I don’t doubt that my parents saw themselves as my hapless victims, as many parents of adolescents do (“You have this lovely child,” a friend of mine said, “and then one day God replaces it with a monster”) . . .Hold up. Why should a teenager have any power? Do they support themselves? Do they contribute to the household? And even if they did—say, by helping out with younger siblings, fetching some groceries, doing an occasional chore—does that give them any management rights? I don't think so.
And indeed, at meal’s end, it is I who rises and clears the plates, just as I always have. . . The traditional complaint about teenagers — that they treat the place like a hotel — has no purchase on me. In fact, I quite like the idea. A hotel is a place where you can come and go autonomously and with dignity; a place where you will not be subjected to criticism, blame or guilt; a place where you can drop your towel on the floor without fear of reprisal, but where, hopefully, over time, you become aware of the person whose job it is to pick it up and instead leave it folded neatly on a chair.One thing that I have definitely learned, as an aunt and as an adult: Unless incredibly self-aware, there isn't a magical day when someone realizes that something is not a given, but a gift, unless it is pointed out to them.
. . . now my daughter’s friends encounter me in the kitchen, in the hall, with barely a word of greeting. They are silent; they look shiftily to the side. They move on fast, up to my daughter’s room, where the sound of talking and shrieking and giggling resumes the instant the door is closed. Quickly they forget I am there; when occasionally they emerge for reinforcements and supplies, they talk in front of me as though I am invisible.Same thing with these obnoxious friends. I remember the childish awkwardness of attempting to interact with adults (I still have some lingering symptoms). But to ignore a human being because she is this tedious, oppressive entity called "mother"? Nuh-uh.
Among her friends, there are some in serious conflict with parents who continue to insist on the family story. She admits now that her greatest anger at her parents has come from their failure to correspond to the image she has in her head of what a parent should be. . .
Strange as it may seem, they are still children, still having to operate bodies and minds that are like new, complex pieces of machinery. . .
Teenagers like to swagger about that they are grown-ups in training, perhaps because they can do a lot of things that were forbidden until now, like driving. But here's the thing: most of them are still, mentally, kids, still harboring childhood fears. Like lack of control and worry over security.For an instant I see something in her eyes, a spark of childlike, innocent fear; and she is still, after all, a child. In some respects she always will be.
