The Mythology

We are a nation dissatisfied.

Our entire nation, our entire economic system, is premised on cultivating dissatisfaction, and then commoditizing everything that could make you happier.

I am aware of this.

Still, the rivers run so deep. And the lies.

This past Sunday I flipped through the Sunday New York Times Magazine. There was an article by a Dad, who cooked for his family. Healthy food. Every night. After he got home from his high powered job writing food columns, I guess. This article was his swan song, his chance to say his true thoughts on the subject, before he said Goodbye to us, the readers, forever. You can read it here.

I read it. I liked it. I pushed it to Jonathan.

In it, the author, confessed that once he had been a good cook, even wooed and won his wife with his spectacular kitchen cooking skills. But he confessed that cooking joyfully for his kids and wife, at the end of a long day, in a household with two working parents, was pretty impossible. He got home late. He still had to get ingredients. Sometimes his kids were crying on the floor in hunger as he dipped his filet of sole in egg, then batter.

He confessed that, although he wrote this column encouraging parents to cook healthy meals every night, (and probably making a lot of people feel really bad in the process) that it was hard, close to impossible, and he advocates more healthy instant meals.

So when I read it, I thought: Thank you. I am not even a working parent. And I appreciate that on a typical weeknight in today's world, it is hard to cook a perfect healthy meal every night, and even the simplest meal does take time. Probably at least 45 minutes. And with kids and homework and exhaustion, that can be a lot to ask. Not including the time to get the food...

I was grateful that he came clean.

But Jonathan was enraged.

He saw the guy as a hypocrite, who made his money making other people feel bad for not living up to this standard that he promoted, only coming clean in the final column that he could barely make it work himself. J saw it as one more step in a society that creates these impossible standards to make everyone feel bad, and promotes them (in this case, not even as an ad, but as a professional journalist).

It made me think.

I guess I am at a place where some friends are struggling. They are struggling to do everything that society tells them they are supposed to be able to do: raise great kids, all in the 99th percentile of everything, have a fantastic loving marriage, on five minutes a week, have two parents working full time at jobs they love with no commute, home for dinner every night, have a wonderful circle of loving friends, and working out daily and eating healthy food.

Hopefully doing a little social service for the causes you feel passionate about, too.

And the truth is, I believe in all of these. They are my standards. But when you cannot do them all, you feel so bad.

And so I got J's point to the author of the offending column. Don't promote and celebrate a lifestyle that you yourself cannot maintain. Don't pretend this is possible, when it is not. Live truthfully. 'Fess up. Be real. Break down the mythology and help people out with some compassion.

In the end, I agree.

What about you?