It all began with a stop at a red light.
Kevin Salwen was driving his 14-year-old daughter,Hannah,back from a sleepover in 2006.While waiting at a traffic light,they saw a black Mercedes Coupe on one side and a homeless man begging for food on the other.
"Dad,if that man had a less nice car,that man there could have a meal," Hannah protested.The light changed and they drove on,but Hannah was too young to be reasonable.She pestered（纠缠）her parents about inequity,insisting that she wanted to do something.
"What do you want to do?" her mom responded. "Sell our house?"
Warning!Never suggest a grand gesture to an idealistic teenager.Hannah seized upon the idea of selling the luxurious family home and donating half the proceeds（收入）to charity,while using the other half to buy a more modest replacement home.
Eventually,that's what the family did.The project—crazy,impetuous（鲁莽的）and absolutely inspiring—is written down in detail in a book by father and daughter scheduled to be published next month: The Power of Half.It's a book that,frankly,I'd be nervous about leaving around where my own teenage kids might find it.An impressionable child reads this,and the next thing you know your whole family is out on the street.
At a time of enormous needs in Haiti and elsewhere,when so many Americans are trying to help Haitians by sending everything from text messages to shoes,the Salwens offer an example of a family that came together to make a difference—for themselves as much as the people they were trying to help.In a column a week ago,it described neurological（神经生物学的）evidence from brain scans that unselfishness lights up parts of the brain normally associated with more primary satisfaction.The Salwens' experience confirms the selfish pleasures of selflessness.
Mr.Salwen and his wife,Joan,had always assumed that their kids would be better bigger house.But after they downsized,there was much less space to retreat to,so the family members spent more time around each other.A smaller house unexpectedly turned out to be a more family-friendly house.
New Yorkers and visitors to the Big Apple will get to ring in the Lunar New Year，also known as Chinese New Year in the U．S．，in style with a fireworks display on the Hudson River set to music written by Academy Award﹣winning composer Tan Dun．
The display is part of the second annual"Happy Chinese New Year：Fantastic Art China"festival held in New York on February 5﹣10，2016．The China Central Academy of Fine Arts （CAFA），the U．S．﹣China Cultural Institute and the Cultural Associate of the Committee of 100announced this year's events on November 18at a press conference at the Lincoln Center．
The"Fantastic Art China"festival will feature a larger and more diverse series of artistic and cultural events across New York's top cultural venues （地点） and landmarks，including the Lincoln Center，Empire State Building and Jacob K．Javits Convention Center．
This year's theme focuses on exploring the complicated relationship between sound and image，said Professor Yu Ding from CAFA，who is also president of Fantastic Art China and in charge of the festival's design．Lunar New Year，which celebrates the"Year of the Monkey"in 2016，is an opportunity to bring China's modern art to mainstream America，and the festival serves as an innovative approach to establishing cultural exchange between China and New York City，Yu said．
UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador Tan Dun's music is a new edition that will be featured at several venues，including a major art exhibition at the Javits Center，events at the Lincoln Center and the fireworks display on the Hudson，which will take place on the evening of February 6．Five barges （游艇） on the river will launch the fireworks designed by CAFA that will tell a story about celebration and conservation．
"We Chinese are fond of nature，so the best way to celebrate the Lunar New Year is to salute with the sounds of nature，such as sounds of water，stone and bamboo，"said Tan Dun at the press conference，"And it will be fun to use the music of water during the firework display．"
In addition to the fireworks，a special lighting show at the Empire State Building will illuminate New York City during the holiday．
Chinese New Year is being recognized as a public school holiday for the first time in New York．Children from the National Dance Institute，which represents 75schools，will perform traditional Chinese dances at the Lincoln Center and the Javits Center．And，in celebration of the"Year of the Monkey"events will feature a conservation message about the endangered golden monkey in China．
Once when I was facing a decision that involved high risk, I went to a friend. He looked at me for a moment, and then wrote a sentence containing the best advice I've ever had: Be bold and brave — and mighty (强大的) forces will come to your aid.
Those words made me see clearly that when I had fallen short in the past, it was seldom because I had tried and failed. It was usually because I had let fear of failure stop me from trying at all. On the other hand, whenever I had plunged into deep water, forced by courage or circumstance, I had always been able to swim until I got my feet on the ground again.
Boldness means a decision to bite off more than you can eat. And there is nothing mysterious about the mighty forces. They are potential powers we possess: energy, skill, sound judgment, creative ideas — even physical strength greater than most of us realize.
Admittedly, those mighty forces are spiritual ones. But they are more important than physical ones. A college classmate of mine, Tim, was an excellent football player, even though he weighed much less than the average player. “In one game I suddenly found myself confronting a huge player, who had nothing but me between him and our goal line,” said Tim. “I was so frightened that I closed my eyes and desperately threw myself at that guy like a bullet — and stopped him cold.”
Boldness — a willingness to extend yourself to the extreme—is not one that can be acquired overnight. But it can be taught to children and developed in adults. Confidence builds up. Surely, there will be setbacks (挫折) and disappointments in life; boldness in itself is no guarantee of success. But the person who tries to do something and fails is a lot better off than the person who tries to do nothing and succeeds.
So, always try to live a little bit beyond your abilities—and you'll find your abilities are greater than you ever dreamed.
At times my mom has been uncomfortable seeing these qualities in me. For example, when I was 12, I went to Puerto Rico all by myself to stay with my grandmother for the summer. My mom was extremely nervous about it. She kept telling me how things were different in Puerto Rico, to always put on sunscreen, not to wander away from my grandmother, and other warnings. She helped me pack and did not leave the airport until she saw my plane take off.
But despite her worries, she let me go on my own. As I moved into my teens, she continued to give me space to grow and learn even when it might have been difficult for her. When I reached my senior year, I decided to move away for college. Once again I found that I differed from my peers: while many of them wanted to stay close to home, I couldn't wait to be out in the world on my own. While my mom may not have been happy at the thought of me going away, she was supportive and excited for me.
One big thing I realized during my senior year, as my mom granted me more freedom, was that she actually believes in me and trusts me. That means a lot. Most of my life, and especially when I was little, the main person I tried to impress in my schoolwork or other things was my mother. I knew she expected nothing but the best from me. Sometimes it was hard to live up to her standards; getting a single B on my report card would make me feel bad because I knew she wanted me to have all A's.
I know that her high standards have helped me stay focused on what's important, like education, and made me who I am. I am thankful for her support and involvement in my life. Most of all I respect her. She is the strongest woman I know and that's why I have turned out so strong and independent.
I am a strong believer that if a child is raised with approval, he will learn to love himself and will be successful in his own way.
Several weeks ago, I was doing homework with my son in the third grade and he kept standing up from his chair to go over the math lines. I kept asking him to sit down, telling him that he should concentrate better. He sat but seconds later, as if he didn't even notice he was doing it, he got up again. I was getting frustrated, but then it hit me. I started noticing his answers were much quicker and accurate when he stood up. Could he be more intent while standing up?
This made me start questioning myself and what I had been raised to believe. I was raised to believe that a quiet, calm child was a sure way to success. This child would have the discipline to study hard, get good grades and become someone important in life.
Now those same people perhaps come to realize that their kids are born with their own sets of DNA and personality traits, and all you can do is loving and accepting them. As parents, throughout their growing years and beyond that, we need to be our kids' best cheerleaders, guiding them and helping them find their way.
I have stopped asking my son to sit down and concentrate. Obviously, he is concentrating just in his own way and not mine. We need to learn to accept our kids' ways of doing things. Some way may have worked for me but doesn't mean we need to carry it through generations. There is nothing sweeter than being individual and unique. It makes us free and happy and that's just the way I want my kids to live their own life.
Failure is probably the most exhausting experience a person ever has. There is nothing more tiring than not succeeding.
We experience this tiredness in two ways: as start-up fatigue (疲惫) and performance fatigue. In the former case, we keep putting off a task because it has either too boring or too difficult. And the longer we delay it, the more tired we feel.
Such start-up fatigue is very real, even if not actually physical, not something in our muscles and bones. The solution is obvious though perhaps not easy to apply: always handle the most difficult job first.
Years ago, I was asked to write 102 essays on the great ideas of some famous authors. Applying my own rule, I determined to write them in alphabetical order, never letting myself leave out a tough idea. And I always started the day's work with the difficult task of essay-writing. Experience proved that the rule works.
Performance fatigue is more difficult to handle. Though willing to get started, we cannot seem to do the job right. Its difficulties appear so great that, however hard we work, we fail again and again. In such a situation, I work as hard as I can—then let the unconscious take over.
When planning Encyclopedia Britannica( 《大英百科全书》), I had to create a table of contents based on the topics of its articles. Nothing like this had ever been done before, and day after day I kept coming up with solutions, but none of them worked. My fatigue became almost unbearable.
One day, mentally exhausted, I wrote down all the reasons why this problem could not be solved. I tried to convince myself that the trouble was with the problem itself, not with me. Relived, I sat back in an easy chair and fell asleep.
An hour later, I woke up suddenly with the solution clearly in mind. In the weeks that followed, the solution which had come up in my unconscious mind proved correct at every step. Though I worked as hard as before, I felt no fatigue. Success was now as exciting as failure had been depressing.
Human beings, I believe, must try to succeed. Success, then, means never feeling tired.
Anyone who is afraid of failure and afraid to face challenges will never taste success, so said our professor in marketing. I laughed it off at that time, but got frightened when it actually happened in my life.
I landed in a small city in the Middle East to set up a firm, a world－class car rental firm. Having decided on the project, I earnestly settled in preparation. With a positive mind, I told myself nothing should stop me now, and was more than keen to make it a success.
However, the least expected thing happened. Iraq invaded Kuwait. Tension ran high in the region. Eventually the war broke out, and many people fled the country, leaving my firm in deep trouble.
As usual, "things become difficult, and every effort seems to bring disappointment, it can be tempting to lower your expectations or even water down your goals and ambitions." I was no exception. I thought of running away. I remembered the words of Thomas Edison, "Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to succeed when they gave up."
I decided to hang on, telling myself, "I am not afraid of challenges and obstacles." I stayed on through months of uncertainty and insecurity. Finances ran low, and banks could not wait to get their dues. To add to all this, the banks even threatened to take all my vehicles. I felt I made a wrong decision to move there. I was now ready to face failure.
I was living against all hopes, believing that something good would happen. After 2 months the war ended. My persistence paid off: people started flooding back and the car bookings picked up, five times over.
Success comes to the one who dares, even after failure, to think positively and look forward confidently. After all, it is only the experience that makes a man tough. Failure does not mean you will never make it. It means that it will take a little longer. It provides us with a learning experience.
A few years back I worked in a university building that also housed a department full of psychologists, all of whom seemed to see us as perfect guinea pigs(豚鼠) for their latest theories. If an eager graduate student showed up in my office bearing desserts and asked me to pick one, I'd cast a careful glance and ask "Why?" before grabbing the apple pie.
So one day, when someone from the Psychology Department posted instructions in the bathroom persuading all of us to "Think about five things for which you're grateful every day for a week!" my response was frankly doubtful. I did the math. Five things a day for seven days is a lot of brainpower to expend without so much as the promise of an apple pie.
I wandered into the office of Heidi Zetzer, the director of our school's Psychological Services Clinic. "What's with the gratitude thing?" I asked. You don't ask an academic question－even a simple one unless you're prepared for a long answer. Heidi came alive, and I sat down. That's when I first heard the term "positive psychology". The gratitude thing, as I had called it, was but one small and simple element of the practice. "Kind of like training the brain to focus on joy," my friend Heidi explained. "It's only a week," she urged. "Try it." I did. And guess what? It worked.
Every day for a week, I found five distinct things for which I was thankful. They had to be different every day. I couldn't get away with just being grateful for my wonderful husband. But I could, suggested Collie Conoley, another positive psychologist, express my gratitude for specific aspects of a certain person each day. He's a great cook. He always puts our family first.
Life will never be perfect. I still see new stories that annoy me. The traffic in my city is maddening. I wish I could speed up my recovery. But with just one simple exercise, I'm rediscovering the peace of that old saying: accepting the things I can't change, working without complaint to change what I can, and being wise enough to know the difference.
And all it took was a little gratitude.
America is well known for being a melting pot of different ethnic groups and cultures, but nowhere is this diversity more pronounced than in Queens, New York.
Here, second-generation Puerto Ricans live alongside third-generation Greeks and first-generation Koreans, all united by a common feeling of pride in their American identity. However, they are also proud and curious about their ancestral roots. National Geographic's Genographic Project, also known as the Human Family Tree, set out to trace the origins by examining their genetic makeup using a simple DNA test. What interested them more was something that intrigues us all: the history of our recent ancestry. One recurring theme among immigrants seems to be the hard work and sacrifices that went into building a new life, and how their descendants now feel a duty to honor that effort by working hard too. Here is one Queens resident's story.
Richard, 38
My great-grandfather Tomas came to America from Poland when he was fifteen. His mother had died, and his father remarried. Tomas didn't like his stepmother, so he ran away to Belgium, where he boarded a ship to America—without a ticket. Arriving in America with nothing, he got a job on the railroads in California. Then one day he saw an announcement in a newspaper that was read by immigrants. It was from his brother in New York who was also seeking his fortune in America and was looking for him. Tomas got in touch and they had an emotional reunion in New York, where Tomas subsequently settled. This is the story that my grandmother has passed down to us, to my parents, and all my aunts and uncles. She is an amazing woman and I suppose: the one who holds us all together. She's actually quite forgetful now, but she never forgets family details. What that has meant is that all of us have a strong family bond and a strong sense of belonging to a group that has struggled and fought together to steered here.
Recently, as the British doctor Robert Winston took a train from London to Manchester, he found himself having to listen to a loud conversation of a fellow passenger woman. Boiling with anger, Winston took her picture and sent it to his more than 40,000 followers on the Tweet. By the time the train reached the station in Manchester, some journalists were waiting for the woman. And when they showed her the doctor's messages, she used just one word to describe Winston's actions: rude.
Winston's tale is a good example of increasing rudeness, fueled by social media in our age. Studies show that rudeness spreads quickly and virally, almost like the common cold. Just witnessing rudeness makes it far more likely that we, in turn, will be rude later on. Once infected, we are more aggressive, less creative and worse at our jobs. The only way out is to make a conscious decision to do so. We must have the courage to call it out, face to face. We must say, "Just stop." For Winston, that would have meant approaching the woman, telling her that her conversation was frustrating other passengers and politely asking her to speak more quietly or make the call at another time.
The anger we feel at the rude behavior of a stranger can drive us to do out-of-place things. Research discovered that the acts of revenge (报复) people had taken ranged from the ridiculous to the disturbing. Winston did shine a spotlight on the woman's behavior—but in a way that shamed her.
When we see rudeness occur in public places, we must step up and say something. And we can do it with grace, by handling it without a bit of aggression and without being rude ourselves. Because once rude people can see their actions through the eyes of others, they are far more likely to end the rudeness themselves. As this wave of rudeness rises, civilization needs civility (举止文明).
When I was a child, I dreamed of becoming many things. Sometimes, I wished I was an astronaut going up into space, finding new planets and jumping around in a cool space suit. Other times, I imagined being a cowboy in the Wild West, wearing stylish cowboy boots. On other occasions, I pretended to be a famous footballer, using my skills to score lots of goals for my team.
Looking back, I realize that imagination is a wonderful thing. I was able to create entire environments and scenarios in my head, using nothing more than my brain, and to be able to adapt things in my everyday surroundings to fit the specific story of the day. Growing up with siblings (兄弟姐妹) also helped, as it meant that even bigger stories could be created, combining our ideas and putting our thoughts into action. It also allowed for more varieties in the stories, as sometimes I could be the hero while on other occasions, I would be the bad guy.
One of my all-time favorite memories as a kid was playing in my back garden. I played the role of Indiana Jones, which cleaned up at the cinema at that time, with my younger sister as my assistant and my brother as a bad person. We used everything in our garden, from the path to the fence, as part of the storyline to create obstacles that needed to be overcome, and we would keep the story going for hours!
My personal favorite game was Indiana Jones and the Stolen Easter Eggs, where my brother hid small chocolate eggs around the garden and my sister and I had to find them by answering questions or solving a puzzle. It was difficult, but eventually we found all the eggs and shared them together.
Since then, I have seen many great things and met many amazing people. The elements of fun and varieties of my creative imaginations are what I try to bring into every part of my positive life. So I can enjoy sharing with and hearing about other people's stories, too.
Once an old man used to go out to jog every morning. One day he was running around a track that circled the high school football field while the football team was conducting their practice. When the players began running their races up and down the field, the man said to himself determinedly, "I'll just keep running if they don't stop." So they ran and he ran. They kept on running and he kept on running.
Finally, totally exhausted, the old man had to stop. When he stopped, an equally exhausted football player walked over to him and said, "Sir, I'm glad you finally stopped. Our coach has told us that we have to keep running as long as you are jogging!
It seems to me that we can sometimes find ourselves in a similar kind of situation when it comes to conflicts—that is when we have different opinions about something with someone and get into an argument with him or her, our voices get raised. Neither side wants to be the first to give in, to stop speaking in anger. Everyone has the attitude, "I'll just keep on till he gives in." So the other party stays mad. So we stay mad. And on we go, finally finding ourselves emotionally and even physically exhausted by the continuing animosity(敌意).
Let me challenge you to do something very difficult. The next time you get into an argument, be the first to give in. Be the first to stop the shouting and the name-calling. Be the first to say, "I'm sorry." It's the quickest way to stop that. As a saying goes, "A soft answer turns away extreme anger, but a harsh (严厉的) word stirs up anger."
Ecofriendly Vauban, lied in the southwest part of Germany, has everything—treelined streets, perfect houses—but it's missing one urban feature of the last 100 years or so: the car. And Vauban residents don't mind one bit. Vauban doesn't ban cars entirely. Rather, it just tries to reduce the use of cars by creating "parkingfree" and "carfree" living. In Vauban, parking spots are a nono private property. Cars can only be parked in public parking lots, so living without a car saves residents the cost of parking in the public lot. Cars also are prevented from using certain roads and must stick to strict speed limits. With these limitations, fewer than 20 percent of residents own cars. And now, with a population of 5,500, it's attracting attention from around the world. Can an ecofriendly city like Vauban be a model for Americans to stop their over reliance on the cars?
Sometimes when I watch a news report what's in the back of my mind is what isn't being reported or stressed. While this ecofriendly city is inspiring in that it shows residents getting exercise and fresh air through the majority use of bicycles, as well as good oldfashioned walking, common sense would tell you that even for a place like Vauban, Germany, it owes its existence to the cars.
Do you think that bicycles were able to transport all the construction materials that were needed to build and maintain the ecofriendly homes and businesses in Vauban? It took cars to help build this city. It's one of the paradoxes of life that sometimes in order to get away from relying on something like the car, you actually have to rely on that very thing at the beginning and into the foreseeable future to some degree.
I myself haven't owned a car for more than 14 years, and mostly get around town running, walking, or using public transportation. There are times I wish I had one, since it would make many things easier, but overall I'm glad not to have to deal with the headaches of owning a car, which caused me to get rid of it in the first place. And all the walking and running has helped to keep me fit and healthy. To get even close to being like ecofriendly Vauban, Americans will need to absolutely change the way they live. Commuting (乘车上下班) patterns will have to change, public transportation will have to be invested in, and so on. And though ending our love affair with the car will be impossible during my lifetime, we may at least start to see more Vaubanlike areas in the USA.
We can hope that Americans will consider using their feet more to get around, cutting down on pollution, and giving themselves some more exercise.
One rainy afternoon, I was on a cross-town bus when a young woman jumped on. She had a child with her who must have been about 3 or 4 years old.
The bus was full, bumpy, and it soon got noisy as her kid began crying because he couldn't sit next to his mother. There were a couple of open seats, but they weren't together. She was flustered and looked embarrassed.
Then another woman, a little older, stood up and moved so that the mother and child could sit together. The mom smiled as a thank-you. And then three words came out of the older woman's mouth that elevated the entire energy of that bus ride:" I've been there".
Simple, undramatic and honest. In that moment, it seemed to unite people. Why? Because almost all experiences are shared human experiences. We forget that, as we forge (前进) through life, focused on our own troubles and needs—which are actually less unique than we think. How can these three words create more connection in your life? Ask yourself: "Where am I holding back?"
One thing I know for sure is this: Healing others helps heal yourself. I noticed this recently with my friend, Tracy, who took a new friend who had suffered miscarriage under her wing. Tracy had three of them before having her daughter two years ago. Our intellect needs a doctor to explain the medical side of things, yes. But our souls need human connection to help us along. No one can do that better than someone who has been exactly where you are.
Can the essence of these three words help you make a small difference right now? It can be as simple as volunteering your seat, sharing some helpful advice or even lightening the mood with a joke when you notice that someone's uncomfortable -because we're all in this together.
About five weeks ago, I noticed the skin of our pet lizard was growing dusty. It worried me. I reported the strange surface on the skin of the lizard to my husband and children the next morning. Seconds later, our lizard emerged from its tank with its old skin flowing behind it.
I didn't think about it much until a morning last week when I knocked my favorite teapot off the table. It burst into hundreds of pieces. As I swept up the mess, I wondered why we had been breaking so many things over the months.
The destruction started three months ago. It was my husband's birthday. He had just lost his job. The uncertainty was starting to wear on us, so I wanted to do something special.
"Let's make a cake for Dad" I cried.
My kids screamed with joy. We baked, iced and sprinkled for most of the day. Candles on the cake! Balloons on the walls! Flowers on the table!
Two hours before my husband came back home from another job interview, my daughter climbed up to grab a glass vase from a high shelf. It fell and crashed beside the cake. Tiny pieces of glass were everywhere. She sobbed loudly as I threw the cake away. My husband had banana pudding for his birthday.
Three days ago, the light in our living room suddenly went out. After several frustrating hours of unsuccessful attempts to fix it, my husband suggested watching the Michael Jordan documentary series The Last Dance.
The poignancy of Jordan retiring from his beloved basketball to play baseball and what had pushed him to make such a tough decision took me by surprise. As I watched him take off his basketball uniform and replace it with a baseball uniform, I saw him leaving behind the layer that no longer served him, just as our lizard had. Neither of them chose the moment that had transformed them. But they had to live with who they were after everything was different. Just like us. I realized that we have to learn to leave the past behind.
Humans do not shed skin as easily as other animals. The beginning of change is upsetting. The process is tiring. Damage changes us before we are ready. I see our lizard, raw and nearly new.
Jordan said that no matter how it ends, it starts with hope. With our tender, hopeful skin, that is where we begin.
When I was in the fourth grade, I worked part-time as a paper boy. Mrs. Stanley was one of my customers. She'd watch me coming down her street, and by the time I'd biked up to her doorstep, there would be a cold drink waiting. I'd sit and drink while she talked.
Mrs. Stanley talked mostly about her dead husband. "Mr. Stanley and I went shopping this morning," she'd say. The first time she said that, soda (汽水) went up my nose.
I told my father how Mrs. Stanley talked as if Mr. Stanley were still alive. Dad said she was probably lonely, and that I ought to sit and listen and nod my head and smile, and maybe she'd work it out of her system. So that's what I did, and it turned out Dad was right. After a while she seemed content to leave her husband over at the cemetery (墓地).
I finally quit delivering newspapers and didn't see Mrs. Stanley for several years. Then we crossed paths at a church fund-raiser(募捐活动). She was spooning mashed potatoes and looking happy. Four years before, she'd offer her paper boy a drink to have someone to talk with. Now she had friends. Her husband was gone, but life went on.
I am living in the city now, and my paper boy is a lady named Edna with three kids. She asks me how I'm doing. When I don't say "fine", she sticks around to hear my problems. She's lived in the city for most of her life, but she knows about community. Community isn't so much a place as it is a state of mind. You find it whenever people ask you how you're doing because they care, and not because they're getting paid to do so. Sometimes it's good to just smile, nod your head and listen.
I always wanted to be extraordinary at something. Not just as in, " Great job, Jimbo!" No, I wanted to be best-in-class, awe-inspiring, tiptop; a world-famous genius, like Michael Phelps or Mark Zuckerberg.
Unfortunately, my version of reality did not quite line up with this delusional vision. I was a good swimmer, but I peaked at the collegiate State Championships level. My academic record was pretty solid, but I never would have made it into one of those ivy-league schools.
Though I rose to above-average status in a couple of areas, the disappointing truth was that I would never amount to anything more than a mid-sized fish in a small pond. God apparently had other plans.
What drove me crazy, though, was the superstar talent thrown in my face at every turn. Some folks just seemed to get an unfair intensive dose(剂量)of it. Why couldn't I be like Bernie William, the famed New Yorkees player who also happens to be a world-class jazz guitar virtuoso(艺术大师)?
Some say greatness is simply a function of putting in the practice time. Around ten thousand hours, to be precise, according to author Malcolm Gladwell. I don't question the theory of devoting extraordinary efforts to developing one's expertise, but it seems that raw talent is equally important. You either have it or you don't.
I've heard that as people approach middle age, their life satisfaction increases because they begin to accept the gap between the expectations for themselves and the reality. After a few decades of frustration without the desired results, we eventually come to terms with how our lives turned out, even if it falls far short of our idealized youthful expectation.
Hope bends, it seems.
The daughter of a friend of mine recently left university and entered into the world of work, taking on a temporary office job. At the end of her first week at work, she phoned home in tears and complained to her mother, "There's no time to do anything else. I'm so tired when I get home in the evenings that all I can do is watching TV. Then I have to rise early the next morning and do it again! If this is what work is like, I don't want to spend my whole life doing it!"
We take it for granted that work must be a major part of our lives—in fact, for many people, it's the primary aspect of our lives. We define ourselves and measure our happiness in terms of how successful we are in these roles. Normally, 40 hours a week, 48 weeks a year, for up to 50 years—not including traveling time and the time we spend resting.
Is this really what we were born for? Is this really what life should be about?
Of course, if you're lucky, you might have a satisfying job which suits your inborn interests and skills, and which is challenging and inspiring. In that case, your job may provide you with what psychologists call "flow"—a state of intense absorption, which makes you feel engaged and alive. Perhaps the majority of people aren't that lucky and do jobs which are repetitive and boring. But I would argue that, even if your job does provide you with "flow", work should just be an aspect of our lives, rather than its defining feature. Working 40 hours a week makes our lives become narrow and restricted, so we lose sight of other possibilities. There's so much to learn in life, so many different ways to develop, so many experiences to absorb, so many activities and adventures to enjoy, but while we spend so much time working, it's difficult to find time and energy for these.
"Wow, this carrot is shaped like a spaceship!"
As a child. I'd always been drawn to strangely shaped vegetables in the produce aisle: horseshoe eggplants, flat bell peppers, three-legged carrots, but as time passed, TV ads and perfect supermarket displays taught me that tomatoes should always be perfectly round, carrots straight and apples bright red. I was taught that what looked nice must taste nice.
Today, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)acts much like Vogue and Cosmopolitan, setting unrealistic beauty expectations on how produce ought to look, down to the exact color, shape and size. But appearance is a poor indicator of flavor, nutritional value and even freshness. Food stylists in TV ads have conditioned us to see pretty as delicious and nutritious. However, Linda Hagen, a professor of consumer behavior from the University of Southern California, denies the connection between beauty and nutrition, explaining that it is just another marketing strategy used by food companies to increase sales.
In the United States alone, an estimated six billion pounds of ugly produce is left unharvested, unsold and uneaten every year. That's enough food to feed three million people for a whole year!
The discarding of imperfect produce is not just wasteful; it also contributes significantly to climate change. Rotting produce creates large amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas 28 times more effective than carbon dioxide. When supermarkets toss away an ill-shaped tomato, they are also tossing away all of the fertilizer, water and energy that went into growing, storing and transporting that tomato.
I've decided to take this issue into my own hands. Working with local farms. markets, meal centers and food banks, I have rescued over 4, 500 pounds of edible, nutritious, often organic, ugly produce in my city. However, helping can be a lot easier than driving from farm to farm every weekend.
