Tuesday evening roundup and rambles

If you get very upset at the destruction of historical places, don't look at this slide show of what's becoming of Syria.

I wholeheartedly believe in the smart vs. dumb policy affiliation, rather than a partisan one.

Sigh. It was a medical student--my (ethnically Egyptian) roommate at the time--who introduced me to hookah. His take was, yeah, it's terrible for you, but you only do it once in a while, so whatever. So sure, slap all kinds of warnings on the hookah bars, but don't go shutting them down.

Didn't I tell you the Stanford study (on organics) was BS?

You may notice that I quote Carolyn Hax all the time because she's so spot-on all the time. I love her take on trust issues:

If you’ve been burned to the point of “trust issues,” it’s your job to deal with that; it’s not your next partner’s job to follow your rules to avoid upsetting you.

This goes for any type of issues. I've thought about it a lot of late, with regard to my mother and also a friend. When--if Person A doesn't necessarily understand Person's B's sensitivities (say, to strip clubs or pornography or infidelity)--should he/she change his/her behavior because of the way it makes Person B feel? And when should Person B needs to work on him/herself?

When mom tells me that I'm fat/cold/harsh/not worthy or capable of love/doomed to a life of loneliness/surrounded by depressing furniture/financially irresponsible/an extremist/selfish/sporting bad hair/unfeminine, etc... and I ask her to please stop because it doesn't endear me to hear to hear these things non-stop, and she retorts that I'm too sensitive and that she's only trying to help--whose issue is it? It's not a rhetorical question.

The argument can be made that even if Person A were right on substance, it could be in both parties' interests for Person A to let it go. Person A may find strip clubs not only harmless but also an economic boon to the strippers, but may decide that Person B's perhaps-irrational feelings on the matter are worth honoring, especially if Person B doesn't generally ask for much. Or Person A may sit down and explain his/her point of view to Person B, and Person B may see that his/her demand is unreasonable or irrelevant.  It would depend on whether Person B's feelings were rooted in jealousy or in justice. Either way, the feelings are valid, but their nature could determine how they're managed--and either way, they're not to be ignored.

We ignore feelings at our own risk, even if we find them absurd. People can accommodate things, until they can't. I'm willing to accommodate my mom's barrage of insults, until I'm not. It's not a conscious decision; at some point, I snap. And the more determined I am not to snap, the worse things get. For example, before I went to see my parents for Labor Day weekend, I thought, "you are the adult; you are ultimately responsible for your words, including those said in response to her." So I ignored her as she insulted me for five days straight (and then snapped when she wouldn't let me finish my book). It's a pattern: the other time(s) that I specifically went into the visit thinking, "I'm going to actively work on managing conflict with my mother rather than passively letting it escalate," things end very badly. And that's because, I now realize, mom thrives, or thinks she thrives, on conflict, so she pushes and pushes until she gets it. Accommodating her only has her push harder. She's overplaying her hand: she thinks I'm so afraid of losing her that I'll cave--even though it hasn't gone down that way for over a decade. She can't, won't see that it only pushes me away (and so she reacts to my distance with more pushing, and the cycle continues).

***
It had to happen sometime, but it caught me off guard: I ran into my ex-bf's friends' who live a block down the street from me. I'd only met them twice, together, so I'm not sure I would have recognized them--in this case, just him--had he not recognized me first, or had we run into each other closer to the metro (and farther from our street). He was perfectly pleasant--so much so that maybe he hadn't heard about the breakup, but more likely that he's just an unbelievably pleasant person. It was in both our interests, for the block we walked together, to minimize any awkwardness, so there wasn't much--but probably enough that if he hadn't already known, he'd figured by the time we went our separate directions. I managed to keep the encounter from sending me down the spiral of recalling everything I disliked and disrespected about the ex--a spiral I've successfully avoided for months. But where does this leave me in terms of running into my not-quite-neighbors? It'll probably happen again. I guess it doesn't matter; we never felt the need to get together even when F. and I were dating, so it's not like they'll make any friend-like motions now. It's kind of too bad because I like them, but it would be too weird.

***
Speaking of people I'd rather not think about, RM came to mind today, during a lunch break that punctuated a loooong series of meetings. One of our hosts described someone he'd worked with, a Captain in the Navy. This was served up as evidence of the guy's toughness, as in, "he was a Captain in the Navy, so by no means a diminutive or sensitive looking guy." Well, RM was a Captain in the Navy, and he wept on the couch when I wasn't up for entertaining him.

With RM in mind, and with another situation related to divergent attitudes about food in the back of my mind, I recalled RM's inability to grasp how much I didn't care about anyone else's eating habits. I didn't care that he bought junk food, or that I was inspiring him to eat more healthily. I also recalled his inability to grasp that I was not obsessed with nutrition or menu-planning. Not every (or perhaps any) decision I made about food preparation was driven by the need to optimize nutritional value. But RM thought I had some grand eating scheme that I followed religiously, that I would make lists and write out meal plans wouldn't make sense otherwise. Someone who never cooked for himself, ever, didn't understand that when you shop for and prepare your own food, you have to plan ahead at least a little bit. I was so sick of talking about food with RM: sick of explaining myself, sick of shrugging every time he told me I ate "healthy."

Mom, too, would ask me about what was so healthy about every food I opted to eat at a given moment, and what was unhealthy about every food I didn't opt to eat. And she would complain that I spent "too much" time on food. It happens; two Sundays ago, I spent more time cooking than even I cared to; but I had food--CSA veggies--that had to be made (and even then, it was all of a few hours). Similarly, when I was spending "too much" time on food in Boston, it was because mom kept buying food, and it had to be made. But why is it any one else's business how much time I spend on food? Isn't that a personal choice? Do I tell mom that she spends too much time sorting the mail or clipping coupons? But that's the crux of the mom issue: control. If I were spending that same amount of time on anything else, she'd fixate on that (and she has: many years ago, when I still lived in Boston and was at her house for the weekend, I sat down to write a letter to a friend; mom remarked that I'd do well to quit spending so much time writing letters). In fact, in her series of rants that morning after our fall-out fight, the stated issue was my "self-imposed rules for how I spend my time," and "making food" only came out as an example when I asked her to clarify. So we know mom's issue, and food is just one manifestation of it (crosswords are another). And they're not unrelated: it's inconceivable to mom that I do these things because I like to, not because I feel I have to; not because I'm following "self-imposed" rules.

On Friday, I devoted more time to dinner than I usually do, since I was cooking for friends. In less than an hour (not counting the broth, which I'd premade that Sunday that I spent too much time on food), I made what one friend characterized as "the perfect fall comfort food." If I may say so myself, it was umami heaven, between the broth (made with some dry mushrooms), the sun-dried tomatoes, and the nutritional yeast. I was amazed at how well the ingredients came together.

As I cooked, my kitchen filled with the combined aroma of olive oil, onion, and garlic, and then rosemary (and then white wine, sun-dried tomatoes). The aroma was comforting in the most obvious way--food scents are comforting--but also in a social sense. Smells, in general, evoke memories, and I associate making food with being around friends. I really learned to cook in Geneva, where making dinner was a social occasion every day. The following year, back at Smith, I lived in a vegetarian co-op where making meals was a social occasion by definition. I enjoy cooking with other people, but the other night, even cooking by myself (but for other people) felt social.

***
I can understand the fact that people like RM and my mother take my love for food and run with it. I can understand that the way I eat strikes some people as extreme. (I would retort that some of their eating habits seem extreme, but that's not the point). I couldn't care less about what other people think, and I'd sooner avoid the topic altogether than have to explain my choices. But it's a human drive to be understood and to want to be yourself, especially around your friends, and so it bothers me when my own friends say things like, "you have to understand that not everyone eats kale and quinoa." Um, okay. [This was in the context of her bf's possibly joining a bunch of us for the weekend; he, apparently, doesn't eat kale and quinoa. I. do. not. care.] Why would a close friend of mine think for a minute that I care?

Look, people: I'm not your food police. I'm not anyone's food police. I'm not even going to be the food police for my morbidly obese friend who has a lot to gain by eating well, because I know just how much she would have to want to change for her to change. I'm not interested in convincing people to change their eating habits; what I can do is offer guidance, mentorship, recipes, etc. for people who want it, whether it's for a single plant-based meal or a trial period or a long-term commitment. People can benefit from hearing that I do quite well on vegetable-based protein, and that I don't give a second thought to fat or carbs. That what you do eat matters as much as what you don't eat--that if you're eating filling, flavorful food, you won't feel deprived and you won't sabotage yourself by feeling the need to overcompensate. That eating well isn't (solely or primarily) about looking good; it's about feeling good and thinking more clearly. But I'm not interested in converting anybody. The decision, the drive, has to be theirs. On a purely selfish note, if everyone quit eating animal products (and highly processed foods), there'd be fewer size 0-2 clothes left for me.

Still, I've come to see that my very existence as a vegan can put people on the defensive. If you are willing to take control of your life in any way--career, relationships, food--you are a threat to people who'd rather make excuses. Exhibit A is the resistance in obese families and other obese communities when one person decides to leave, decides that he/she doesn't need that obesity anymore. Who do they think they are to start exercising? Why isn't this good enough for them? And exercise is (relatively) mainstream; a plant-based diet, in most parts of the world, is not.


Going back to Carolyn's point about how sometimes it's your issue: if someone threatens you by her mere existence, it's your issue; you need to work on you. When mom nags me all day long, it's fair to say it's her issue--there's only so much I can work on me before I snap anyway. But if you're so sensitive about your eating habits that the mere presence of a vegan fills you with bitterness and resentment, you may want to soul-search about why that is.