Monthly Archives: November 2021
I Wanted to Raise My Kids Middle Class. The Problem Was We Weren’t Middle Class Anymore Like many high-achieving immigrants, the writer Shoba Narayan wrestled with a thorny question after she struck it big in North America: Can you pass on your working-class values to your children even if they’re not, well, working class? Wealthsimple makes powerful financial tools to help you grow and manage your money. Learn more My aunt lived in a tiny yet clean home in the village of Painganadu, in Tamil Nadu, India. After traveling some 8,400 miles from our apartment in New York City, my husband, two daughters, and I arrived outside, via a black Ambassador taxi, jetlagged and sleepless. My husband, Ram, and I both grew up in middle-class Indian families, and had arranged the trip to help connect our two American-born girls to that nebulous thing called heritage. We planned to conduct Hindu rituals at […]
Time millionaires: meet the people pursuing the pleasure of leisure. It is often a struggle just to stay afloat. But if you had enough money, would you pursue more of it – or should time now be our greatest aspiration? In every job he has ever had, Gavin has shirked. When he worked in a call centre, he would mute the phone, rather than answer it. When he worked in a pub, he would sneak out of the building and go to another pub nearby, for a pint. His best-ever job was as a civil servant. He would take an hour for breakfast, and two for lunch. No one ever said anything. All his colleagues were at it, too. When the pandemic began, Gavin, now working as a software engineer, realised, to his inexhaustible joy, that he could get away with doing less work than he had ever dreamed of, […]
The Dangerous Downsides of Perfectionism Many of us believe perfectionism is a positive. But researchers are finding that it is nothing short of dangerous, leading to a long list of health problems – and that it’s on the rise. In one of my earliest memories, I’m drawing. I don’t remember what the picture is supposed to be, but I remember the mistake. My marker slips, an unintentional line appears and my lip trembles. The picture has long since disappeared. But that feeling of deep frustration, even shame, stays with me. More often than I’d like to admit, something seemingly inconsequential will cause the same feeling to rear its head again. Something as small as accidentally squashing the panettone I was bringing my boyfriend’s family for Christmas can tumble around in my mind for several days, accompanied by occasional voices like “How stupid!” and “You should have known better”. Falling short of […]
