Our Summer of Surrender

The word surrender came to me while I was driving far into New Jersey to give up one of our two cats, accompanied desperate scratching and whining from the passenger seat. We adopted that cat, already mature, three years ago to be a companion to the one we already had, but the project had not been a great success. I could easily live without pets, but the rest of the household love them. This cat was high maintenance from the start, and when we had arranged to move to a smaller apartment, I made the decision for the family that it would not work to keep it. This decision was partly based on sound logic and partly on anger, but I kept to it despite the familial distress it caused, and so found myself driving to the shelter in Jersey.

I was thinking about what would happen when I arrived, and found these cat people judging me and even trying to cajole me to take the cat back home. What words should I use? I decided to frame it as surrendering the cat, and I noted that once I arrived this was the verb used on the forms of the home as well. The cat was duly surrendered, to a good home, and I still feel it was the right choice for us, despite the old pang of guilt.

Then I took the verb further. This entire summer has been one of surrender for our family.

The kids have surrendered the most in their transition into college. They have surrendered youth, trading their lives of established friendships, defined agendas and parental protection for the uncertainties of residential college. In one case, there has been some surrender of innocence as well, witnessed by somewhat reckless road trips and a couple of hangovers.

For us, the toughest surrender has been of the kids, letting them fly into this new phase, abandoning our control and protection and leaving the house feeling suddenly empty. I think of those corny cartoon characters people stick onto the back of their cars, with daddy (daddy always first, betraying the conservatism of this type of family), mummy, the kids and pets lined up in order. Our tribe has gone from six to three in very short order – indeed for the two weeks that Carmela is in Holland getting Laura started I am down to just two, with just the remaining cat for company.

Then, with the choice to move to an apartment to save some money, we have also surrendered the familiarity of house where we were living, and started the painful process of surrendering possessions as well. While the apartment has many advantages, it lacks its own parking space, leading me to wonder whether it is time to surrender our car as well, since Zipcars and Uber are so ever-present nowadays.

Surrender is a great verb to describe our experiences, because at its surface it implies failure and resistance but because it also points to the best path forward. The term is most commonly used in a war or dispute scenario, where surrender is linked to abject defeat and sometimes even to cowardice. In our macho world, this is not something to accept might apply to us – you can hardly imagine the current US president using the term, at least not to describe himself or his own side. We are inured to resist the concept, and hence to resist what might lead to it being needed.

But surrender is really a beautiful thing. Love always involves surrender, and sex often does. Surrendering of secrets and fears can be the most liberating thing on earth. True peace must involve surrender by both sides in a conflict – otherwise it will fester and ignite again later.

A good example is driving with a deadline and hitting traffic. This happened to me last week when taking Carmela and Laura to Newark for their plane to Holland. We left in plenty of time, but there was a snarl up approaching the Holland tunnel that seemed endless – not an uncommon scenario. I went through the normal stages, from complacency to growing anxiety and anger, then mentally assessing alternate routes. After all these stages, I surrendered, sure that I could do nothing to alter our fate. The anxiety and anger lifted, and, as usually happens, so did the traffic, and we arrived in good time.

It is similar in the dentist’s chair. Once we have learned that a bit of pain is inevitable and surrendered to it, suddenly the pain is not so bad after all.

It is not a coincidence that the first step in twelve step programmes and some other therapies is surrender. Step one involves admitting that we are powerless against our addiction and that life has become unmanageable. Surrender! That is the necessary condition for healing. We hand over to fate or a higher power or something outside our control, and then we stand a chance at liberation.

Faith is really surrender. It recognises that we choose to believe something that we cannot prove no matter how hard we try. Christianity does not use the verb very much, perhaps because of its negative connotations, but it would be an apt choice in many prayers.

Finally, I have seen many times people surrendering to death, and always witnessed how that gives peace and clarity of thought and can make even death a beautiful thing.

When reading about surrender, one article suggested four steps to follow. First, surrender fear: fear is the source of our resistance, and once we can surrender to fear then it will often disappear. Next, we should surround ourselves with healing people. Then we should prepare a nurturing space, in our physical lives and in our minds. Finally, we can surrender to peacefulness. I can see some value in such a model, since it might help us through bottlenecks towards our surrender.

So perhaps I stumbled upon a rather good word on my noisy journey to Jersey. The key to our summer of surrender is actually to surrender, rather than to resist or anticipate or fear. Some aspects of our yielding will be much easier than others, but the mental model of surrender could be our best friend.

Already, I sense a lightness while in the new apartment. I don’t anticipate too much mourning for the car. The hardest part will be surrendering the kids to the next stage of their development, facing daily choices at college that previously we could have helped them with. If all of us can find an attitude of surrender, then probably we will be OK, and even feel lighter and find many blessings in our new situations.

Will our summer of surrender feed into an autumn of peace? I can hope so, but there will be challenging steps on the way. At least now I have a roadmap. Maybe you could use the same one – it is free, and available to everyone.                

All our Lies

One consequence of moving is that three weeks of mail, and counting, has vanished into a postal black hole. The system for redirection in the US is free, and very simple to order online, but it seems to fail in its most basic function, a timely redirection. So every day I trot to the mailbox hoping to see a pile of Economists and Guardian Weeklies and Times, and every day so far I’ve come back empty handed. A week ago I got around to changing address with all the publications, so probably new ones will start arriving before the old ones. And of course we have no idea what other important correspondence is languishing in the same black hole.

The lack of periodicals has enabled me to catch up on reading some real books. Staying with my non-fiction preference, I’ve completed “Evicted” by Matthew Desmond and “Everybody Lies” by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz.

I enjoyed them both. Both authors are young and pioneering in how and what they research, and come up with compelling narratives. I think I would rather spend time with Desmond, and Stephens-Davidowitz seems rather less mature. But I applaud both of them. These are probably examples of books that would never have been published, leave alone become best sellers, in the days when publishers stayed close to established writers and subjects. So both represent another victory for technology.

If you are minded to read Desmond’s book, then be aware that it is heavy. The subject matter is depressing and the stories of human degradation are relentless through the book. I found my mood darkening every time I spent any time reading it, and it took a couple of days after I had finished for me to be able to stop thinking about it and becoming rather miserable.

The book looks in depth at one of the curses in modern US society; that of housing challenges for the poor. There has been little new public housing built in recent years, and some existing public stock has reverted to the private sector. The financial crisis increased demand for rentals because some people faced foreclosure. There are few landlords willing to work at the bottom of the market, despite its profit potential. And regulation favours landlords. Meanwhile incomes for the poorest have been static – without any inflation – because the poor don’t vote or garner much sympathy and budgets are cut as taxes are reduced.

The consequence of all this is that poor people live in ever more desperate accommodation yet must to pay ever-greater shares of their income on rent. Many fall short, so are evicted, and that leads to a cycle of one-off costs and stigmatisation from which there is no real escape.

What is most brilliant about the book is how Desmond did his research. He chose one typical city, Milwaukee, and actually observed the lives of his subjects first hand, first by living in a trailer park and then renting in the inner city while shadowing some of its residents. He tells real stories of real people, and then draws general conclusions to create a bigger picture. It is a wonderful piece of work. We can feel how the people become trapped. Desmond shows great balance, avoiding sentimentality and not glossing over the failings of the people he got to know, and even showing some empathy for the landlords, who it would be easy (but lazy) to characterise as uncaring villains.

This way the reader really feels the desperation of the victims of the system, as well as understanding the trade offs of the other players like landlords and police.

It must have been a feat of endurance for Desmond to complete his research in this way. I hope many people read the book, including people in positions of influence. But somehow I doubt it. It is such a tough read and such a difficult subject to address with policy. Desmond advocates universal housing vouchers, so that housing becomes a right in the same way as health care – or at least health care in civilised countries and even in the US before the current administration guts Obamacare. Good luck building support for that in the current climate.

The second book was a much easier read and cheered me up. Stephens-Davidowitz is a data scientist with some interest in anthropology. A few years ago he would have ended in market research or some statistical branch of policy research. But now we have the internet, and he has specialised in using that new toy.

His brilliance is to find new ways to use the big data from things like Google searches and Facebook posts. But his approach is grounded in science. He is careful about statistical validity of conclusions and risks of bias, and he complements his new data sources with established ones to add weight to his findings. He points a clear path forward for his new approach. Though he is not modest in highlighting its potential, his argument remains quite compelling.

The examples he used to demonstrate his new art were decidedly tabloid material, though even some of those could help influence public policy. There was much discussion about how much sex we really get compared with what we claim, and some analysis of homosexuality and racism. Usefully, there is strong evidence that curbing abortion leads to failed abortions and deaths of foetuses – just what anti-abortionists are claiming to try to reduce. The analysis of closet racism is linked to Trump’s success as a backlash to Obama, based on regional patterns. I would have liked to see an attempt to see how much closet sexism did for Hillary, but that was absent.

While such content fuelled my interest, I also enjoyed the discussion of the theory, having been a poor statistician at college and then having developed some ideas about big data in retail in its early days, when we started loyalty programmes and suddenly had a surfeit of information about customers but little idea how to garner value from it.

Here, Stephens-Davidowitz makes some useful points. Big data is often only confusing, if you don’t know what to look for. It can bring out false positives just from its scale. But it does allow you to test ideas much more quickly. Key seemed to me to have a workable hypothesis to test. The other key was to divide real intention from claim. Most Facebook posts are more fantasy than reality. And I liked the revelation that when people put a series of quality movies on their “must watch soon” list, they are much more likely to seek out more banal comedies and action movies when the time comes to next choose what to really watch.  

I was never short of hypotheses. I mused about putting coffee odours in shops and having kids visibly eat ice creams on forecourts on hot days, thinking both might drive sales. We had many thoughts about variable pricing by station and by time of day, though here we always missed the longer-term effects of playing games with customer tolerance. I would have enjoyed the opportunity in business to try out many more live tests of this sort of thing. It remains true that winning retailers will not just be the ones with more data, but the ones with more skills at how to use it.

We already see the beginning of the dangers of the power generated from this new science. We can be manipulated in our opinions without any realisation or regulation. Data can be a tool, for example with insurance companies, to profile consumers in ways that are smart but could be discriminatory. Stephens-Davidowitz has some incomplete ideas about such things.

Overall, I can be a bit grateful as well as a bit annoyed with the US postal service for giving me the extra time to do a bit of book reading. Lo and behold, this afternoon has seen the arrival of two Economists, hopefully the start of the flood. But the interlude was enlightening. I should read more. Really, I should – not just claim that I should or have some vague intent to.       

Seeking Peace

I have a feeling that peace is ripe for a comeback.

This has been a strange summer for me in terms of my own peace. We started with a long series of visitors to entertain in New York. Then we took a trip to Portugal, almost my epitome of peace. But the two-week trip was less peaceful than usual, because we entertained a series of visitors. Still, there is always plenty of peace there. One of the greatest blessings of returning to the same place is the removal of stress – packing, travelling, finding eating places and so on are all familiar and peaceful.

Once we got home, we started the process of moving house, and peace took a back seat for a long period. The commercial aspects were simple enough, but the physical and emotional ones tough, and not over yet. Only now do I start to enjoy some routine in the new house, with a few quieter days and a regular pattern of sleep.

Interspersed with this, I indulged myself with two music weeks this summer, at Princeton and last week in Boston. It is hard to imagine better therapy from the house move. Boston was an early music festival, based in a seminary and with a strong spiritual component to both the music and the rest of the experience. I entered feeling stressed and aching, and left a week later with peace running through my body and brain. I am a lucky boy.

In two weeks time the summer will end with our nest becoming empty, as both kids depart for college. In one case, this involves intercontinental relocation. Her mum will accompany her for two weeks, but it is still a change of great magnitude. Once Carmela returns, there will be a new routine to our lives, one that has much to look forward to but also many challenges.

During all this, my daughter in London has had an eventful summer too. Already managing a relationship across two continents, she has moved apartments, upgraded her existing apartment and then rented it out, all major projects. Meanwhile she is still in her first year of professional practice and suffered a hospitalizing illness.

This roller coaster of a summer has left me yearning for the peaceful life I had before and hopefully can return to. I have come to appreciate its predictability and its gentle routines much more once these factors have departed. And I have cherished the moments and periods of peace that I could snatch even more than usual, as well as contemplating why such things offer peace.

In recent years I’ve been spending more time than previously in places of worship, and I am wondering if peace is the key to their appeal. It is striking how often the word comes up during Christian services. We offer each other peace, we ask for the peace of God and we close with a wish for peace. We don’t offer each other love, or joy, or excitement or fulfillment, we choose peace.

Peace is an even more prevalent theme towards the end of life. At the nursing home where we volunteer, nuns are essentially preparing residents for a peaceful death. That is a beautiful thing to witness, and the serenity of the residents and goodness of the ones reflects peace on us too, each time we visit. Each time I get close to nuns or priests or seminarians, I can appreciate the simplicity of their chosen life even more and understand why someone might choose it.

That end of life emphasis might be one reason why peace doesn’t get quoted so often as a key goal. It is associated with retirement, closure, slowing down, and even death. Paradise is seen as eternal peace, and we maybe miss the implication that it could be peace we should be looking for while we are here too. It can be noted that peace is the main desire of babies as well. It is just between the extremes we lose our way.

Think of all the things that peace can be seen as the opposite of, and its desirability might be even clearer. It is the opposite of war of course, but also of anger, hate, fear, longing, guilt, shame, debt, stress or pain. Imagine a life without all those ailments!

When I retired early, people asked me what I was seeking, and I can’t recall replying or thinking about peace. My mother and others tried hard to stop me, and part of the reason was a fear that inactivity would lead to rapid decline. But I think I may have stumbled upon something rather rare and special.

Of course, peace never sold much, so the advertisements we are surrounded by rarely seem to promote peace. And we seem to have fallen for the trick. Think of major trends in society, and consider how they promote anything but peace.

One trend is the shift to urban living, with its high pace and intensity. Another trend is towards activity and experience based leisure. For myself, I still remember when I started taking a third week to my annual leave, and the deep feeling of peace that arrived somewhere during week two. A further trend is towards intense connection on social media, with its action focus and implied expectation to show off and keep up with the frenetic pace of others. Finally, those with work put in ever-longer days; while those without suffer all the ailments that peace is the opposite of. Inequality does peace few favours.

So, if we agree that it is a great goal not just for older people, are there things we can do to create more peace in our lives? As usual, identifying the goal is an important first step, one that would immediately lead to smarter choices.

If we can, we can avoid the headlong rush to experience more and more, to fill our facebook timelines. This past weekend our daughter went on a camping trip. They lasted a few hours, then it rained, so they drove on a whim to Boston, and then a few hours later through the night to Philadelphia. Now, OK, they are kids and experimenting, it was healthy enough, but a funny example of modern impulsive life.

If we have a holiday, we can travel more slowly, or arrive home a day earlier, or do one less activity while we are there. If we have a free weekend, we can just enjoy each other’s company around the house rather than rushing to the shops. If we have a family reunion it is not so easy – peace is not how I would classify my trips to Manila, lurching from meal engagement to meal engagement on clogged roads.

Then we can find peaceful routines in our days and in our weeks, and learn to savour them. No matter how busy we are, we can find oases. We can also find ways to ration our use of social media. We might even consider something religious or mindful.

Perhaps the most important thing of all is to value our sleeping. We cut corners with sleep at our peril. It is OK for short periods during projects or times of change, but getting back into a regular sleep pattern must be a priority. Peace will often follow, and ailment opposites have more chance of fading away.

So, let us seek peace, deep peace of mind and body. Let us try to help those who are dear to us towards peace too. May peace be with you.