Tell the Truth, All the Time, with Compassion

I'm not sure I'm allowed to use this picture of David Wood, but I'm going to do it anyway, and I suspect David will not sue me for it. He's not that kind of guy.

I discovered David Wood via Dean Dwyer, who interviewed him about his remarkable life - growing up in England, leaving school at 15, working as a window washer, then travelling the world for over 10 years before settling in Canada and becoming a multi-millionaire.

David is a "trainer's trainer" - he discovered that his passion lay in helping people lead the lives they want, and that is a quest I am quite serious about these days (heck, I'm fifty years old and STILL not sure what I want to be when I grow up, although I'm getting a better idea thanks to people like Dean and David). I've been listening to his podcast The Kickass Life for a few months now, and enjoying it very much. So why am I blogging about it now?

I got a little behind with the podcasts, what with the holidays and all, and was listening to Podcast number 053,  released on October 30th, while doing my Shabbat cooking yesterday. I was stunned to hear him read out and praise a review that I'd left on iTunes a little while back. It's about 4 minutes in. In particular, I'd forgotten that I'd mentioned one line of his, which had caught Dean Dwyer's attention and also mine. Here it is:

Tell the truth, all the time, with compassion.

 Now, I don't think of  myself as a liar, but you know those casual little white lies we all indulge in - saying we were caught in traffic when we really left the house too late, for example. It really is a trivial thing, but I think it shows a deeper mindfulness to find a way to apologise for being late without lying or being hurtful.

It's also a matter of courage, of taking responsibility for your decisions. If I decide to keep one of my kids home from school because I think they need the day off, I don't say they are sick. I don't hide receipts from my husband and I don't sneak things into my kids' food.

Sometimes life is harder when you decide to tell the truth all the time, but so far I haven't regretted it. My late grandmother was the kind to rub your face in her version of the truth whether you wanted it or not, and that's not what I'm doing. I might choose not to volunteer information if I can't think of a compassionate way of sharing it. But I think it is a great maxim to live by.

What do you think?

A big step!

I did it! I applied for the Amazon Associates program. If they accept me, I will be able to post links for you, my faithful readers, to buy stuff from them, and I will get a small commission each time you do.

I've hesitated about this for a long time. I've not enabled AdSense or any other kind of advertising on my blog, because I myself don't like blogs that are covered in ads, and I didn't want mine to be like that.

I've been listening to the podcasts of a guy called David Wood. He's an Englishman who grew up in poverty, left school at 15 and spent 10.5 years of his life backpacking through the world. He then became involved in multi-level marketing and other such businesses and became wealthy, but he also discovered that his passion lay in helping people achieve a better life. He became a trainer who goes around the world speaking to people and enthusing them to have what he calls "a kickass life".

One of the characteristics of a kickass life is the ability to look at oneself and the world with clarity and love, and to try new things as fearlessly as you can manage. Not to mention laughing a lot, which is something I try to do anyway, but now I have the endorsement of a major figure!

So one of the things I want to do is to take baby steps towards supporting myself and my family with the writing I do online. Affiliate links are a particularly painless way of doing that, both for myself and for you - they will be clearly labeled, they will only be for things I really recommend, and they won't clutter up the blog with noisy garbage neither of us wants to see.

In my fearful imagining, you are immediately repulsed by the entire idea, nobody ever comes to read this blog again, and my life loses all meaning.

In reality, I'm hoping you are mildly curious and not disapproving. Let me know if you feel strongly otherwise. It won't happen for a while, as I now wait with trepidation for Amazon's judgement - and yours.

Just Eat Real Food

This is a picture of my JERF shirt. I've worn it a few times, but I'm still too vain to post pictures of myself in a tank top. One of these days, maybe.

One of my favourite podcasters these days is Sean Croxton at Underground Wellness. He makes YouTube videos, has a podcast and a blog and a book and everything people need to have nowadays to make an impact. He's a reformed personal trainer who has gone from the "Eat Less, Move More" mantra of the low-fat paradigm to a holistic, paleo-type version of reality. He has hosted the Paleo Summit and the Real Food Summit, and the latter has become his latest passion. Since that is a passion I share, I'd love to talk about it some more.

When I was growing up in Israel, there were fast food restaurants, and I believe we may have patronised them from time to time. There were definitely real and good restaurants, and I have fond memories of going there, especially a Yemenite restaurant in Tel Aviv called Zion, which absolutely had the best hummus I have ever eaten anywhere, any time.

But most of the time, we ate at home. We shopped at the local grocery store and there was a "yarkan", a greengrocer, who came by once or twice a week to sell fresh produce from the surrounding farms. Later, when I was older, we went to the supermarket in the nearby town. Now the little local grocery store in the village is closed up and I don't know what happened to the "yarkan", but my family members who live in Israel still mostly buy and prepare real food. I should add that these are people who work full-time, so they are just as pressed for time as anybody else. They just care about what they put in their mouths. I remember my mother being creative with leftovers - Friday night's chicken usually ended up in chicken fried rice by Wednesday or so.

The same was true when I was a student in Amsterdam in the eighties. We ate out, but it was real food cooked in a restaurant kitchen. We mostly cooked at home and invited each other over for dinner. Real food was our life. If we had no money, we bought cheap food, but it was still food. Cooking for your friends was the ultimate expression of love for them.

I'm not sure when and how those concepts got lost in North America. Somehow it seems to be elitist to be interested in the provenance of your food, and you are expected to pay extra for the privilege of eating food that isn't drenched in Roundup. How did this happen, and why?

I know the story of the munitions factories that needed to be converted into fertiliser producers after the war, and of women who were sold the myth that they were much too busy to cook for their families. I remember TV dinners - we lived in the US for a few years in the sixties and seventies, and I think my mother bought a few out of curiosity. They certainly weren't a staple - ugh! I remember making my mother buy horrible cotton-like bread because I wanted the Bicentennial stickers (anybody remember those?). And yet that food was probably more nutritious than what we are feeding our children today - and there were no giant sodas.

I have busy children who sometimes have activities that keep them away from home at dinnertime. I hate those weeks - the dinner table is such an important place to reconnect at the end of the day. My wallet, their nutrition and our relationship all suffer when they are away from our dinner table too many nights a week. We are all sugar addicts but we are working diligently on taking better care of ourselves, and that means real food as much as possible. Fruit, nuts and cheese will make you feel so much better than granola bars or cookies.

Real food not only nourishes our bodies, it connects our souls and helps us feel rooted to our families and our land. What are you doing to feed yourself and those you love real food?