Moving Pains

I am well aware of the well known adage that moving comes only after death and divorce as a stress creator for most people. I also have plenty of experience of moving – counting something like 25 moves in my lifetime without including temporary ones or student moves. But this week I moved house, and as usual I was not prepared for its trauma.

There are many factors in this move that have made it relatively easy. We moved less than a mile down the road. We have a two-week period with access to both the old and the new places. I have no real work to distract me. We have a son who has become both willing and able to help. We generally feel optimistic about the move.

There have been a few factors to make it a bit more difficult. We are reducing space – by choice, because the kids will be leaving for college next month. The same factor creates a bit of a fear of the upcoming empty nest, with the move making this seem imminent. We have some challenges with pets. It is mid summer with New York heat to handle. My wife is especially busy at her work.

These are challenges indeed, but so minor compared with those facing many people when they move. Our move is largely devoid of any shame or dread. We do not wake in fear of a medical report, or a school counsellor’s call or bad news from a boss or a creditor. There has not been any serious risk of temporary homelessness or of scary bridging loans. When the inevitable costs arrive, we can cope. We have not let ourselves or anyone else down.

Even so, the whole experience has been rather horrible. As usual. And I have been surprised just how horrible. Once again, as usual.

The whole process starts of mildly enough. As a family, we talk about whether to move at all and what we are looking for. It is a process with compromise and discovery and bonding. Then the first stages with agents are also pleasant, with the excitement of viewings and of rebalancing expectations and budgets with reality.

But then things head quickly downhill. Agents prove unreliable, and we end up giving up time without achieving a viewing, then seeing places that are hopelessly unsuitable or unavailable or with some hidden nasty surprise. Renting in New York, this all happens in a hurry, because time is money and demand exceeds supply and landlords value occupancy above everything. As a result there is a period of about ten days that starts with giving notice to the current landlord, involves frantic viewings and discussions and decisions and negotiations, and finishes with the signing of a new lease. There is some thrill to all this, but also fear and a sense of being mistreated and conspired against and partially informed. Still, the family relationship can withstand this bit, because of the adrenaline of the thrill of the chase.

There is a growing market of no fee leases and trying to cut out the agent, which makes a lot of sense given the fees they take for so little work and given information power of the internet and standardisation of contracts. Still, you need courage and patience to make this work, and I am pleased that we stuck with the traditional approach this time.

The lease is signed, huge cash is handed over, and our problems are just beginning. We actually have to execute the move! Our movers were not too bad, but they have a lot of power and are ready to use it. What am I supposed to do if they say an item wasn’t on the list, or another isn’t packed well enough or if there isn’t time to dismantle something or if they can’t wait to leave all the boxes in random rooms and get away? It is one of those situations where we just have to be clear and friendly, and hope for their goodwill.

Then, like all projects, the last 5% is the hardest. We have to hack away at the pile of boxes in the new place, while clearing away the remnants of the old. There are specific causes of stress in all of this.

The first challenge is different priorities in the family. I am keen to empty boxes and create a liveable space, even if we end up moving things around again later. My wife wants to take her time and get it right. I have little sentimentality about holding onto things we probably won’t use again until the next move and the one after that, but my wife finds it hard to throw anything away, and to be fair often finds surprising uses for things later on. We try to stay civil, but we are under pressure, with deadlines and penalties, so we argue more than usual.

The second challenge is sheer physical exhaustion. I admire people who do moves for a living, their strength and stamina and smarts are amazing, but of course they have tools and techniques. When I have to move anything, I finish aching, bruised and deflated. The cumulative effect over a week or more of this is pain and stiffness everywhere. This doesn’t help sleep, and I wake after too short a sleep barely able to move.

Put these challenges together, and it is clear why people say all those things about moving. We are at our worst, and struggle to see an end to it. The good news is that I’ve started to sleep properly again now and this morning I could get out of bed in fewer manoeuvres than it took yesterday.

So what can we learn from all of this? Many things. We always reveal facets or ourselves when we are stressed.

First, don’t move too often, and try not to have to be reminded every time how horrible it is.

Linked to this, have a moving mentality all the time. Before buying anything, think about where it will be stored, not just in this house but the one after that. Have a ritual that buying something new requires disposing of something old. And spring clean parts of the house every few months, so that all the decisions about selling or giving or chucking don’t have to happen all at once under pressure.

Next, note where your oases are. These are things that you reach for to comfort you when you are stressed and that can relieve you. A long sit in the steam room did me no end of good yesterday. Reading over a good cup of coffee. The reassuring rituals of a mass.

Linked to this, find ways to celebrate things in your new place. The toilets flush reliably, the hot water comes on immediately and the shower pressure is great. The morning sun is a delight. Shorter walks to the subway and shops are wonderful. Then remember to count these blessings even when the stress has passed.

Most important, note how you are feeling and behaving, and recognise that others may feel like this all the time. I try to do the same when I am sick. So now I can recall my aches when I visit the old folks and see their pain and frustration. I can give a bit more of a pass to someone who might be rude to me or drive recklessly; perhaps they are going through a move.

And I can judge others a bit less. I am reading a book called “Evicted” by Matthew Desmond. It is a depressing read, about families living on the margins of society living in fear of being moved from home to home. These people have all the stress I am feeling now, all the time, with dollops of dread and shame added. I can imagine that migrants and refugees have similar challenges. Society should be able to do better. And a good dose of moving medicine can help to remind me of that.     

Welcome to the Pretired

The Economist included an excellent special report last week about the economic impact of the biggest demographic trend facing the world. And it also made a radical proposal, one that I support.

The radical proposal was about finding a name for the group of people who are no longer in traditional paid work but are fit and active. They suggested calling this group the Pretired, which seems as good a name as any. The report makes the point that once a group has an established name, it is often given more consideration by policy makers and firms. They used the example of teenagers, a term that hardly existed before the fifties. Once the term became established the group somehow became a material focus for policy, for marketers, and even among its own members. The Economist claims that the revolution in popular music could partly be put down to the creation of the teenager moniker. Other examples could have been school kids, retirees or mixed race people. Then there are acronyms like DINKY (double income, no kids yet) or even groups of countries like the BRICs. I like the idea.

The pretired, if that is what we are to call us, are an exploding group. Just one generation ago, people in the developed world tended to slog on to 65 in their job, and then keel over just a few years after stopping. My Dad was not unusual in retiring at 65 and dying at 66, and I think there was a connection between the two events as well. He even squeezed two other heart attacks into the interim.

Now things have changed. Articles bemoaning how everything is worse than in the good old days tend to forget that healthy life expectancy has increased by more than 20 years within the last 50 years, and is still increasing. That is one heck of a bonus, or at least it offers that potential. The developing world is catching up as well, so that by 2050 there might be a billion or so pretirees in the world. God willing, that might just still include me.

The excellent special report demonstrated what could be achieved by focussing on an under-studied group. There were four basic sections – employment, consumers, finance and technology – and it had strong insights in each area. The overall tone is optimistic: much writing casts this demographic as a future drain on society, but the report suggests that with a smarter attitude they can be an engine for progress – as well as having a great quality of life ourselves.

In employment, the prevailing model is changing but not fast enough. Many people, like me, take retirement earlier nowadays, for a variety of reasons, but formal pension ages are slowly increasing, and the changes from defined benefit to defined contributions have left many people short of funds for their pretirements. Yet the gig economy is very well suited to pretirees – I even investigated becoming an Uber driver myself last year, until I learned that it would not be viable on low weekly hours because of NYC insurance requirements. Further, pretirees can make excellent small business owners and entrepreneurs as well as incubators, consultants and all that other modern jargon.

The report argues that the concept of the cliff from work to leisure should be abandoned. Firms should learn what older staff could do for them, especially in teams, and pensions should be modified to be more flexible towards different income patterns. In my view, another blocker is the idea that, within one firm, wages can only go up as tenure increases. If we pretirees accepted that our value might plateau and even gently decline (and if our pensions were not adversely affected) then firms and their staff could work together for longer.

I’ve never understood why companies have been so slow to see the pretired group as target consumers. We have all the money! And we have the time to spend it! Yet, judging by the ads we are exposed to, for example when watching golf, all we are interested in are financial products and health care solutions, and many of these are marketed to us as if we are ready to slow down. What rubbish!

Again, it starts to change, only too slowly. Leisurely cruises are being supplemented by holidays with a bit more adventure. True, we are not all that keen on sleeping on the floor or third class travel or sharing rooms, but we can often hike, or cycle, and do things that are not called bingo. We want to learn, and experience, and be entertained, but currently we have to scratch around to find suitable products for all those things. I have consciously looked for companies to invest in that have credible offerings for pretired people, and if I were starting a business I would surely target that group. It is the way to succeed.

The third chapter is about finance. The report makes a neat point that while many pretirees have too little money to spend, many others have too much, and are too cautious based on risks of living long and potential nursing home or medical costs. My mum spent most of her life saving up for such costs, and, like many, in the end the costs never really materialised. She died holding more assets than she had ever had, yet had deprived herself of many comforts.

The report calls for financial products to respond to this reality. Reverse mortgages are a great example, but they have not become mainstream yet, partly because no one is marketing them smartly and because of unnecessarily high costs. The other opportunity is for modified life insurance policies that may out not when we die but when we live too long or when we face huge costs. Smarter medical and care choices and options would also help – the UK Conservatives were on to something with the social care policy that they botched before the election.

Then there is technology, another topic where providers have had blinkers with their targeting. How long did it take before laptops had readable print or simple menus and instructions for those not born into the tech world? How is anyone over 50 supposed to be able to type reliably on the small screens of today’s smartphones? And why do Fitbit and those working on the internet of things focus on tiny youth markets when the benefits, and the profits, could be huge for pretirees? Providers will wake up to this eventually, and those of us new to pretirement are not as tech adverse as the previous generation, so expect many innovations in the next few years.

So, a common theme from the report is the blindness of providers to pretired opportunities. Employers, movie-makers, travel designers, financiers and technology providers are all locked in to other generations and other ages. Yet I repeat – there will be a billion of us, we have all the money and we have much of the time!

In so many ways we have been a blessed generation. Few of us have seen war. Many of us will live 30 years longer than our parents did, and with better health, including mental health. We were the last generation to enjoy secure work and generous pensions, and the first to enjoy the fruits of a shrinking world. Perhaps we will be the last not to be seriously discomforted by a changing climate. Judging by this report, things will only get better for us, since for sure many of these opportunities will come to pass. The blessed will become yet more blessed. But this is good news for everyone, because our abundance, while not equitable, can be an engine to help later generations as well.      

Does Religion do good?

On holiday, I read “A little History of Religion” by Richard Holloway. I was glad I did. The book was a good read and very balanced in its approach. As on so many topics, I learned once again how sparse my own education and knowledge has been. I usually feel good about that, because it means there are so many more interesting things still to learn.

I know don’t why I have suddenly taken to anthologies, but I tried a second one on the same holiday, “Language of the Spirit, a brief introduction to classical music”, by Jan Swafford. This experience was not so rewarding, even though the book contained plenty of unfamiliar information and left the same feeling of awe and curiosity. To my taste, it just wasn’t so well written. Too much of the book became brief biographies of composers, often rather similar, sprinkled with descriptive passages about a couple of their works that used too many of the same adjectives. I’d have preferred more about how music itself evolved. And I have to confess to being rather annoyed by everything before Bach being glossed over in a handful of pages.

The book on religion benefitted greatly by examining many religions, and therefore finding what they all had in common and what led some to have greater success than others. Many themes emerged.

The foundation of all religion concerns two questions that humans have pondered ever since their brains had the capacity to think. The questions are related and are “why are we here?” and “what happens to us after we die?” We are not content with banal answers such as “we just are” and “nothing” so we search for alternatives. Religions usually form when a prophet, someone claiming to receive messages from beyond our everyday comprehension, convinces others of the veracity or importance of something he (usually he) has heard.

Though the author is careful not to judge too harshly, and indeed was an Episcopalian bishop before resigning to take more humanist positions, but put this simple way religion does seem rather silly. The world is full of people claiming special powers, and we usually give them short shrift. Some remarkable things have happened through history, miracles really, though that is not really surprising when we consider how long and deep history has been and how weird things happen to all of us every day.

The next question that comes through when comparing religions is to ask why some stick and others don’t. Here we start to see how religion is interlinked with politics, indeed could almost be seen as the same as politics. To gain any following, the prophet has to have some charisma and a message that fits the moment. Usually, parts of that message are a challenge to established religious and political leaders, so there is a struggle, often violent.

Then, one a religion starts to gain a foothold, organization is key, just as it would be for a new business. Holloway is brilliant and dispassionate about this. In his discussion of Christianity, he writes less about Jesus and more about Paul, whose energy and organizational skills gave the new religion solid roots and a chance to endure. I had not considered this before. Christianity got its structures, rules and marketing message in place, part of which is to establish a power structure that people are prepared to follow. Indeed, Catholicism has generally played the organizational game brilliantly throughout its history, so much so that for hundreds of years the pope was the most powerful political figure on the planet.

It was interesting to read of the similarities and differences between religions. Eastern religions see time as a long series of circles, while Abrahamic ones envision a straight line. Some religions draw strength from being closed, and others from being open and accepting of converts. Most have a set of practices that make sense for any community that wants to sustain, such as honesty and looking out for others. But some, notably the Chinese ones, have how to live this life as the primary focus, while others are more about preparing for what comes after death. Reading about Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism drew me towards the Chinese religions, and I would like to study them more.

The other factor that came through in the book as a repeating feature is how the initial principles of a religion tend to conflict with the organization required to sustain it, or at least with the tendencies of leaders. All three Abrahamic religions started when a prophet railed against the way established religion had departed from its principles. But then each time the principles get relaxed again once the new religion has become settled.

Again, Catholicism is the most glaring example. I sense this tension every time I go to mass and hear the gospel. Two of the most basic themes of Jesus were acceptance of all others and rejection of greed. But our prayers only really focus on other Christians, and the Vatican resides in splendour and its hierarchy usually places veneration of itself above humility. Christ would find plenty of moneychangers in today’s temples.

Historical examples from Catholicism are even more hypocritical. Crusades led to immense suffering. The practice of indulgences led to Luther. The justifications for a pope, celibate priests and a male only priesthood are thin.

It is possible to follow the journey Holloway must have taken from being a bishop to an agnostic. There are two parts, one about faith and the other about benefits.

Faith, which Holloway defines in language including acceptance of uncertainty, is the trump card of religions. Going back to the original two questions, we are inclined to believe something, and we want to be on the right team. There is a great incentive to stick with the team we were born to. Isn’t it amazing how almost all Poles believe Christ to be the son of God, yet Saudi’s credit Mohammed as the true pointer to Allah while Indian’s believe in many Gods and reincarnation? Hardly anyone changes team. Thinking hard about this can only add to doubts that any of the teams really have the answers to the initial questions about where we come from and where we are going.

Then, when we see how humanity continues to contaminate nearly all religions, thinkers might be pulled still further away. What can be the benefit of institutions that move so far from their founding principles and lead to such terrible behaviour?

This leads to the question I have asked myself before, about whether religion has had net benefits or costs to humanity. I see the benefits, in terms of the selfless and humble creeds, the good works (the Catholic Church is the most effective NGO on the planet), on the inspiration for human brilliance and also in the hope it offers people. But the hypocrisy is galling, as is all the destruction and intolerance religion has led to.

But, thanks to Holloway, I now come to a new conclusion. I don’t think the question makes sense any more, because a world without religion is a world without humanity. Religion is just one manifestation of our nature, and is really a dimension of politics. It is just how we are, good and bad, powerful yet powerless. Asking whether religion has been a good thing is like asking whether humanity has been. And, on balance, with all our flaws, we have been – at least for us.

This also helps me with the personal dilemma. I participate more in religion now than I ever have before, and it happens to be the most hypocritical of religions. But I am happy to do so. The rituals, the gospels, the life code all help me and make me a better person, and many of the people I meet through religion are a source of inspiration. That is enough.

Thank you, Richard Holloway. Your book has helped me in many ways.