This time we did sit down to a proper contract negotiation. We agreed to split the year in two. For the six summer months her work would have priority in our diary, with mine providing some background support. I would concentrate on research and writing and take on no outside commitments. The winter months would be free for my speaking engagements, with her help in organising them. Furthermore we decided to split the cooking and catering, with each doing half, she in our London apartment, I in the country cottage. We were fortunate in that we were both independent workers, the children had left home and we were free to organise our lives as we saw fit. Not everyone has that degree of freedom, but most couples do need to rearrange their relationship in mid-life as their circumstances change, when children go or work dries up or changes. Too often one party makes a unilateral decision to change the contract without discussion, even in some situations to look for another partner altogether, often someone with whom they have worked. We were lucky. We were able to help each other and to share our work, and that brought us together in a new relationship.
That contract lasted for over twenty years. They were fruitful and enjoyable times. Then circumstances changed again. I was approaching seventy-five, a time when I was required by law to convert my savings into an annuity. That meant that I did not need to earn as much as in the past. I had a pension of sorts. At the same time our children belatedly began to produce grandchildren. I had not realised how rewarding, but also how time-consuming, these little people can be. Clearly, life had to change once more. This time it was going to be more like what people think of as retirement, in that paid work no longer dominated our two lives, but retiring was not how it felt. We were busier than ever, but differently. A new contract was needed.
Work, of some sort, had to be part of it. Life without something serious to do seems pointless. Since we no longer needed so much moneymaking work we could afford to do more voluntary work. We began to combine our skills and interests on a number of joint pro bono projects, making photo documentaries for voluntary organisations. No longer did we split the year in two because we now worked together. Living now on a fixed and probably declining income we also needed to simplify our way of life, downsizing and discarding instead of accumulating. So much that we had once done now seemed unnecessary, even pointless. Life moves on and leaves a lot behind. It was important, therefore, that we took time to reflect on how best to use the remaining years in our life, now that ambition was pointless and achievement meant something different than worldly success. These last years are precious years and we needed to make the most of them. The new contract needed careful thought. There is a saying that happiness is having something to work on, someone to love and something to hope for. These three ingredients are, to us, what made life worth living.
Of course, we are the fortunate members of a fortunate generation. Many will envy the apparent ease of our lives, although it did not seem easy at the time. Not everyone will have the freedom to make the choices we did. But whatever our circumstances we all have choices. If we are lucky enough to be in a relationship those choices have to take account of the other person. And they need constant revision as our lives change. Otherwise they won’t work. We learnt that the long way, often the hard way. But it was worth it. I sometimes say, half seriously, when others are talking of their second or third marriages, that I, too, was on my third marriage. But, in my case, they were to the same woman, and that made all the difference. Try it, when the time comes. Stay the same but different.
LETTER 18
WHAT YOU CAN’T COUNT MATTERS MORE THAN WHAT YOU CAN
What isn’t counted doesn’t count. That is how the saying goes and it is true that much of life is a numbers game. From the size of the economy to your consumption of electricity or the nourishment in your diet, it is numbers that are the measure. Numbers, and the science of numbers, mathematics and statistics, are the only language apart from music that is truly international, and even music is numbers in another form. Everyone in the world can do the same sums, read the same graphs, make the same calculations, irrespective of what language they speak. That is truly remarkable. It is just one reason why everyone should learn the language of mathematics, and of statistics in particular, as early as possible.
Numbers, however, are dodgy. They don’t always tell the truth, or not the whole truth. The balance sheet in the accounts of a business will not include an estimate of the value of what that business will often say are their principal assets: their people. They only get counted as a cost on the profit and loss account. The Gross National Product number of a country includes much more than production. The costs of government and the armed forces, and those incurred by a road crash and the consequent hospital and repair bills are all counted in, but hardly deserve to be seen as the output of the country. On the other hand, all unpaid work, be it child-rearing, housework or caring for elderly relatives, goes uncounted while estimates of prostitution and drug-dealing are included. Statisticians have calculated that if you had to employ people to do all the home care tasks that are needed you might have to pay each person a minimum of £25,000 year. Add that to our GNP and the nation would jump the queue, yet nothing would have changed. You can’t understand numbers unless you know where they come from and what they include or exclude.
Numbers are easily manipulated. A health report might say that those who run more than four miles a day are 50 per cent more likely than others to develop some particular foot ailment. Joggers start worrying. What the report would not say is that the ailment is found in only 1 per cent of runners; 50 per cent of 1 per cent is not worth the worry. Or, to emphasise the rise or fall of a currency, journalists might draw a graph in which the starting point is not zero but something much higher and nearer the average. That very shortened graph will exaggerate any rise or fall. You have to know what you are looking at and its context.
That proved to be only too true in the Vietnam War, which was largely planned by Robert McNamara as the American Secretary of Defense. Robert McNamara was, by any standards, a wildly successful man. Harvard graduate, president of Ford Motor Company, then rising to the heights of U.S. Secretary of Defense in the 1960s. McNamara epitomised American élan and brio. But he had one major flaw – he saw the world in numbers. The problem with this method in this context was that the Vietnam War was characterised by the immeasurable chaos of human conflict and not the definable production of parts on a factory assembly line, or, in this case, the body counts of friend and foe, which was how McNamara measured success or failure. Things spun out of control as McNamara’s statistical method failed to take into account numerous unseen variables, and the public turned against US involvement in the war through a cultural change that would transform the country. Although on paper America was ‘winning’ the war, in the end they lost it.
The sociologist Daniel Yankelovitch summed up McNamara’s problem in what he called the McNamara Fallacy. It goes like this:
The first step is to measure whatever can be easily measured. This is OK as far as it goes. The second step is to disregard that which can’t be easily measured or to give it an arbitrary quantitative value. This is artificial and misleading. The third step is to presume that what can’t be measured easily really isn’t important. This is blindness. The fourth step is to say that what can’t be easily measured really doesn’t exist. This is suicide.
McNamara even deceived himself. Long after the war he admitted that he had often thought that the war was probably unwinnable but he still believed his numbers and fought on. Something similar happens in education. Teachers will say that they want to develop the whole child and to bring out the best in them. They also recognise that examination results only measure some aspects of any young person’s abilities, yet those are the only numbers they have so those are the ones that they concentrate on and the ones by which they and their schools are judged. Any other talents or competences can’t be measured so are effectively ignored. Teachers recognise this but they are driven by
the numbers and the system to concentrate on those competences and skills that can be measured. These become the effective substitute for a full and rounded education. Parents collude because they in their turn want their children to succeed in the system, even if, like McNamara, their hunch is that the system is only telling half the truth.
As life goes on it gets worse. How do we measure our progress? Life is a journey. We need to know where we are on that journey, even if we have no particular destination in mind. We also want to be happy, to love and be loved, to enjoy friendship and the joy of companionship, to be able to travel, play sport, appreciate art, good food and great music, all the things that make life pleasurable. We may value all these things but we can’t measure them. So we look for substitute measures – the number of ‘likes’ on Facebook or our score of Twitter followers, or, if this is important to us, we will compare job titles with our contemporaries or our salaries. In the end these numbers become important in themselves and are pursued for their own sake.
Why do business executives eagerly accept what are often grossly excessive pay bonuses, even though they know they do not need them and must also be aware of how unpopular they are? It is because they are the best public measure there is of their success. If their bonuses were paid in philanthropic gift tokens they might be just as content, as long as all bonuses were paid that way. Come to think of it, why do they need bonuses to persuade them to do their job? No other profession works that way; nor, when I first started work, did the company I worked for. Make money the definition of success and the numbers may shine so brightly in your eyes that you lose sight of the real purpose of your work or life.
The McNamara Fallacy means that much of life gets pushed down into second or third place. Beauty and harmony, love and kindness, hope and courage, honesty and loyalty: all the things that make life worth living – along with their opposites: cheating, deceit and dishonesty – get swept under the carpet. Nice guys finish last, sometimes. But that depends on how you define the race. If you know how you want to live your life you won’t worry too much about the numbers. Until they catch you out.
One day a developer walked into our family home and offered to buy it for redevelopment. I said it had been our family home for twenty years and was not for sale. He replied that everyone had their price and offered me a sum three times what the house was worth. My eyes widened. What could we do with all that money? A smarter home in a better area? Two homes perhaps? ‘Done,’ I said after only a minute’s thought, and shook hands on the deal. I went into the kitchen to tell my wife. ‘I’ve sold our family home,’ I said. ‘You’ve done what?’ she cried, outraged. ‘You have no right to do that.’ I told her the price. ‘Oh, wow,’ she said, as entranced as I was by the thought of all those numbers. Before the contract was signed we set off to look at all those enticing properties in more fashionable areas, only to discover that none of them offered all the space and convenience of our current home. We would have to give up a lot of what we liked about our rambling, comfortable and shabby home. While we were still looking, still keen to spend all that tempting loot, the economy crashed and the deal fell through. I still live in that old family home forty years later, as do, in another part of it, our daughter and her family. We shudder now to think of what might have happened if we had signed the contract before the crash. The money numbers had temporarily blinded us. As they do.
My wife and I used to play tennis every afternoon, if the weather allowed. I played to win and kept a close eye on the score. My wife couldn’t care less who won or what the score was, she just loved playing the game. I maintained that without the score the game was meaningless. She thought that I was missing the point. I need numbers, money numbers and tennis scores, to know where I stand, both financially and at play. Thanks to my wife, however, I no longer make those numbers the point.
Perhaps life should be like golf. You can play for the fun of it, or you can play to win, or both. But the handicap system means that a better player has to give away more strokes to the weaker player. That makes for a fairer game. The system, however, also makes it possible for the better player to take pride in his handicap even though it penalises him in the competition. I have always thought that the handicap system in competitive sport should be copied in other walks of life because the handicap numbers encourage you to keep improving without spoiling the enjoyment of the game. I now try to think like a golfer. I like to keep the score in the different parts of my life. I also have some basic requirements, mainly financial, that, like a handicap, I try to keep as low as possible. None of those numbers, however, should detract from the fact that the game is the thing. My wife was right: playing, not winning or losing, is what matters.
To me, success has nothing much to do with things. Yes, I am pleased that I have a nice home and can afford to eat well but that isn’t enough to justify a life. So what am I proud of in my life? That was the question put to me by a journalist the other day. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’m quite proud of the books I have written because some people have found that they helped them, but books grow dusty and end up in the dump. I think, therefore, that I am most proud of my family and of my grandchildren because they will last. I hope that they will go on to do great things or be great people.’ In other words, any success that I may have had in my life is measured by the lives of others: my family or some who have found something in my books that was useful, even though I never knew. One of the nicest letters I ever received had no address and no signature. It just said ‘Thank you’ on an otherwise blank piece of paper. That felt good.
LETTER 19
THE LAST QUARTER
Amazing as it may seem to you now, it is quite possible that you will live to be a hundred. I suspect that this letter will not be of much interest to you now, but it raises issues that you will have to start considering in a few years’ time. The last quarter of your life will be the twenty-five years from seventy-five to a hundred. Even seventy-five must seem a long way off, but my guess is that seventy-five will be the normal ‘retirement’ age by the time you reach it. I put ‘retirement’ in inverted commas because I do not believe that you would want to retire from life for the last quarter of it. Indeed, I suspect that the very word ‘retirement’ will be itself retired by then. This, therefore, is my reflection on what life may be like for you in those years.
‘They retired me, the brutes.’ This was a 66-year-old explaining why she had had to leave the job she loved before she was ready to go. Odd how for her the word ‘retired’ had somehow become a transitive verb, something that other people did to you, whether you wanted it or not. Now it would be illegal to force it on anyone against their will, though it frequently happens. Others, however, as they read of plans to raise the pensionable age, might think her lucky to have been able to leave so soon. Those are the ones who cannot wait to stop work, assuming that life without compulsory labour would be a time of unalloyed bliss. Some suspect, however, more realistically, that the idea of a leisured old age, financed by pensions of one sort or another, is a dwindling dream, to be enjoyed only by those privileged few at the top of corporations or, it seems, those who chose to work for most of their lives in the public sector.
The problem, we are told, is that we are living longer. Odd, again, how the gift of an extra ten years or so should be seen as a problem. Opportunities do, however, turn into problems if they are not foreseen or prepared for and this one, strangely, seems to have been creeping up on us unnoticed, perhaps because it was never going personally to affect those currently in power. As if climate change and pensions and retirement issues fall into the ‘not in my lifetime’ syndrome, something to leave for successors to deal with, even though in both cases it was clear that lead times of forty to fifty years were needed for any decisions to take effect.
The truth is that there is no pensions crisis or retirement problem – yet. Seventy per cent of those aged between fifty and sixty-four today are still in employment. And if this seems to leave a lot of p
eople out of work we should remember that even in the peak of life, when we are aged thirty-five to forty-nine, only 82 per cent of us are officially employed – the rest are often also working but in the home and uncounted. The great majority of that 70 per cent in employment at present will also have a second pension building up, will own their own home and may well have inherited or expect to inherit a surplus home from their parents who were the first major home-owning generation. There will always be some who struggle, but the great majority of the new retirees in this decade will not be poor. They can expect to enter their Third Age of ‘living’, after the first two of learning and working, in good shape. For them the next ten to twenty years will truly be ones of opportunity. Unfortunately it may not be the same for you unless you yourself do something about it long before.
That still leaves them, and eventually you, with the question: What do we do? But it is their successor generation and the one after that, your generation, that will have to face the first question: What will we live on? For these age groups it seems clear that despite a slightly larger and later state pension the expectation will be that they will have to be responsible themselves for providing the bulk of their post-employment income. Employers won’t do it for them unless they are forced to, nor will the state compel them to save. Some will. Many won’t, because the pressure of meeting today’s costs leaves tomorrow’s problems ignored or postponed. They may then have to go on working into their seventies, or even their eighties.
That is not necessarily a bad fate. In spite of that misused phrase ‘work-life balance’, work is not the opposite of life but is at its core, provided that it is work one enjoys and can be done at a pace which suits you. It would be more accurate to say what many want is not more life and less work but a better balance of the different types of work. The work we do for money needs to be complemented by the work we do for love or duty, in the home or the community, as well as by the work we do for pleasure and the work we do to improve our skills or knowledge. Ideally one needs a mix of all these types of work. The only difference that age makes is that the mix changes: more work from choice, less work for pay.
21 Letters on Life and Its Challenges Page 10
