Yesterday we had 30 high school students visit us for a “lab tour”. They were so young and curious. We made an agarose gel together and practiced pipetting. Their eyes were sparkling when I told them “They slayed the experiment like the kings and queens”
My daughter had some difficulty with the measurement subject. There is a ruler and a car, and she needs to measure. We had big disagreements. Then I suggested that she practices with ChatGPT. It went perfectly! They became “Besties” very quickly and you should have seen the capitalized —“YOU GOT THIS!!! SLAY QUEEEEEN!!! ” — messages full of emojis, from ChatGPT. It is amazing that it adopts so quickly to whomever is using it at that time.
This week we heard the good news that my older daughter got into Moody, from the waiting list. She was number 33. As a celebration, we spent part of our evening dancing together to “freeze dance, gummy bear, raining tacos” songs. When I was her age, I also got into Antalya Anatolian Middle School from the waitlist on the last day.
But not all days were equal. She also had to internalize what costed her from one simple misunderstanding. Was it a joke? Was it real? How can we be more emotionally wise and alert? I have my own threshold for “losing it” and that costs me in some type of currency. Today’s loss was in messing up my diet.
Having experienced this again and again, how can I become a better me tomorrow? What is stopping me from becoming the person I want to be? James Clear wrote: ~if you cannot do the due diligence to get to your goal, maybe you do not want it for real. Just release the desire.
“Goal vs obsession” was another topic I thought of. Maybe I made bioinformatics and genomics analysis an obsession for myself. I feel this skill will make me very powerful. But I do not have the resources. I started a new youtube playlist called Bioinformatics with Dr. VDB. He is live coding and has some music in the background. It will take time but I will need to practice one by one.
This week I am reading "Emperor of all Maladies" from Siddhatha Mukherjee. This is a very thick book about the history of cancer and cancer therapies. It is very readable and full of stories. I was telling the stories to my mom and she insisted “What happened next?” There were many historical mistakes that caused people to have cancer and could have been prevented. This makes me think what are the mistakes we are making now and not aware of.
We had some discussion with my kids about ultra processed diets and how they can make cancer worse — even if you eat them as a child. They were so frightened and ate 6 apples and 5 oranges to revert back to healthy eating and cleansing. My son enjoys the “What happens when you eat?” flip book, which reminds me the “inside the body cartoon” from my childhood. Vitamin C is checking on an RBC with a stethoscope and the RBC is smiling. When there is too much sugar, then RBCs are upset.
It is more of a responsibility for us than for them. The knowledge is there, the motivation is there. The desire is there. What is stopping me from becoming a better mom in serving them healthier foods? I cannot afford to release this desire.
What I can afford is to aim for “good enough”. Maybe if they had eggs and cucumber for breakfast, they can have a snack and that will be “good enough”. I can stick to my diet 90% of the time and slip off sometime. That should still be “good enough”.
Do you agree with me that we should stop beating ourselves for perfection? Let’s embrace— good enough— and release the guilt and tension. Let’s hold onto the desires—keep crawling—and hope that we will get there one day!
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