“When You Know Someone as Helpful as You”

When she was 8-years-old, my daughter wrote me a poem that I had framed recently, and I wanted to share it here because I think you'll find it relevant, as you navigate your business, or your content or your sanity through this pandemic:

It's called:

Life is Life

A Poem

And it goes like this:

"Sometimes life is easy.

Sometimes life is hard.

Sometimes life punches you in the gut.

But sometimes it calms you down.

But life is life. Believe me, life can be bad but life can be good, too.

Stick to the bright sides Abba. And always remember life is life.

Happy Birthday."

She added a postscript:

"When you know someone as helpful as you that can teach you life is life, you can be happy."

Her insight moved me for obvious reasons. Our family has been hit hard by COVID and, although she rarely talks about the damage out loud, and we have tried to shield her from the worst of what’s going on, her poem made it clear she was aware of some pandemic fallout, and moved to soothe. 

But it was that postscript that got me, too—"someone as helpful as you." As her Abba—that's Hebrew for dad—it's my job to help her, and I love to do so. However, what she probably didn’t put together is, that’s my day job, too. My partner Alek Korab and I run the ETNT Health channel on a website called Eat This, Not That!, the brand that Dave Zinczenko started a decade ago (you may remember him from the Today Show, showing off shocking food swaps—hi Dave!). 

Today, the website has more than 20 million uniques a month, a fair portion of which consume the health content Alek and I make. At first, we were writing about heart health and cancer and diabetes. When COVID hit, our focused shifted—and traffic exploded. Suddenly, millions of people daily were reading our digests of how to stay your safest in dangerous times. Fortunately, they have stuck around to consume content about visceral fat, aging and other health threats.

I don't know if we've made anyone "happy," per se—telling them when and where to get vaccinated; what COVID symptoms to watch for; and how to make sense of the CDC’s advice—but we have given people the tools they need to stay alive, and thrive during these uncertain times.

Sometimes life is easy. These past few years, life has been harder. With my daughter in mind, I will continue to create stories that are helpful, so one day, we can all be closer to happy—and healthier, too.