As a teenager growing up in the suburbs of Washington, I ritually watched the Sunday-morning political talk shows with my family. We parsed and argued and jeered at the screen as national figures delivered careful, poll-tested talking points.

Right after college, after growing up in the United States, I moved to India, broadly telling the story of how an old and stagnant country was suddenly waking up. And I came home, back to America, in 2009 after telling that story and writing a book about that.

For our family, learning was everything. Homework came first; books, being sacred, were never to be left on the floor.

To have come of age during and after the global financial crisis of 2008 is to belong to a generation often unable to do what an American could once expect, and to do what was once expected: Get a job, pay off student loans, and find a place of your own.

If triangles had a god, they would give him three sides.

I consider myself a spiritual atheist. I certainly believe there are forces bigger than ourselves, and that we should be searching, individually, for meaning in our lives. But I don't believe there's a supreme being, an intelligence that created everything.

Flesh will not stand in front of God, so all the decisions you make from your flesh will be paid for with your soul. Your flesh rejects the truth because it desires to do what it wants to do.

We're very open and outspoken about our faith and our beliefs. We also talk about our doubts, our moments of insecurities. We talk about it all day, how we're inspired by God. We recognize little miracles every day, and that's how we're raising our daughter.