Make do, Make do.
It is not a song
of a bird singing
outside the window
on a slightly chilly morning
of a nascent spring
pecking its beak
on emerging leaves
that wear lighter shades of green.
Make do, Make do.
It is me bemoaning
life in a rented place
and not finding
the usual comforts of home
while drinking
my first cup
of Earl Gray.
The borrowed cup,
does not fit
the contours of my palm.
And I sing,
Make do, Make do.
Don’t simply retire from something; have something to retire to. — Harry Emerson Fosdick
The National Weather Service in the United States has the catchphrase about its vision statement and it is to make the United States “A Weather-Ready Nation: Society is prepared for and responds to weather, water, and climate-dependent events”. The mission statement of the NWS is to “Provide weather, water and climate data, forecasts, warnings, and impact-based decision support services for the protection of life and property and enhancement of the national economy.”
If you are wondering what the difference between mission and vision of an organization is then wonder no more: mission statement is what your organization is doing right now, while vision is what your organization hopes to achieve in the future.
Parallel to the motto Weather Ready Nation, thinking about my retirement that will happen sometime in near future, a question sprang up and asked, would it not be nice to have a Retirement Ready Self?
You see, for some of us retirement is not as trivial an issue as changing clothes. Retirement could be a terrifying proposition. It is walking into the unknown just when the realization of mortality is also becoming magnified.
Retirement is like taking off the clothes one is wearing, opening the closet and find what to wear next but unexpectedly discovering that the closet stands empty and there is nothing to wear and hide one’s nakedness and vulnerability.
So, what would be a Retirement Ready Self and how can one reach that state of enlightenment and being?
The ideal state of Retirement Ready Self would have several dimensions, but the basic notion behind is that if one is to end the career today then tomorrow there would be another life ready to slide into and the transition would be seamless, effortless, and in going through that transition, not a single step would be missed.
What would Retirement Ready Self require? Its likely attribute will be:
· Having adequate financial wherewithal.
· An adequate and interesting Portfolio of Engagements.
· A home where you wish to move to. If you are happy with the place you are currently at and going to stay put, then great. One less item to worry about.
· Having adequate social connections.
In short, Retirement Ready Self would be a self that has lined up all ingredients that will fill up the niches that leaving work creates.
What can one do to develop a Retirement Ready Self?
A simple suggestion is to start to create a parallel life while still working. It might be good to start ramping down the outlay of work involvement. Instead of having ten-hour workdays, have eight hours workdays and put the extra two hours into cultivating the portfolio of engagement into which you can slide to.
There is no criminality or judgment in ramping down the work routine. Over the years you have worked hard but enough is enough. You do not have to give all you have. Have some time for yourself and think about what your future self is going to be. Leave some time for yourself. Life is not forever, and we are mortal beings.
Returning back to missions and visons, the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) vision is to “By 2030, [have] a world where all nations, especially the most vulnerable, are more resilient to the socioeconomic consequences of extreme weather, climate, water and other environmental events; and underpin their sustainable development through the best possible services, whether over land, at sea or in the air.”
It is a grand vision requiring international cooperation, that in fact has worked in the past because the weather (so far) has no political boundaries and a flap of a butterfly over Amazon could indeed result in either a tornado or a beautiful sunny day in your backyard.
Be a Retirement Ready Self and listen to what this song is telling you.
Ciao.
Strolling through
a model home
that look like something
only heavens can hold
mind slowly descended
into a trance like state.
Perched on my shoulder, a broker sat
who whispered softly
this home is a cream puff
a diamond in the rough,
a similar opportunity
may never come.
But before I can act
and write the check,
there was a thunderclap,
rain drops fell
and the fever broke.
I am now back
in my musty home
but $500K sitting intact
if the safety of a bank.
It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change. Leon C. Megginson
There are many parallels between politics and evolution. To understand equivalence, first a brief introduction to evolution.
Evolution is a change in the characteristics of living things over time. It’s the process through which populations and species change with time. It is a process that led to longer necks for giraffes over time.
The driving mechanism behind evolution is natural selection. It is the process where organisms with traits that favor survival and reproduction tend to leave more offspring than their peers, causing these advantageous traits to increase in frequency over generations. The mechanism of natural selection is an elegant concept and has a far-reaching explanatory (and predictive) power. Its sweep is so wide that it may sound like a triviality in that if something does not exist then it must not have the advantageous trait to fit the environment.
Passing along of the advantageous traits to a larger pool of offsprings leads to the evolution of different species, a process known as speciation (the process by which populations evolve to become distinct species).
To summarize, natural selection resulting in evolution of species is like a game played in an arena where different species, and sub-species within a species, are vying for a limited amount of resources and the ones that have the right traits to garner the available resources are best suited to survive and reproduce. As a result, such traits become slowly speciated and a new species evolves.
One such advantageous trait is discounting the future (also known as temporal discounting). It is the tendency of humans and animals to value immediate rewards more highly than future rewards.
Take two species in the arena that has limited resources to offer. One species is short sighted and focuses on immediate gains while the other is a planner and tries to anticipate the future and plans for that. The mechanism of natural selection favors the first because the future is uncertain, and what one prepares may not occur.
Now let us return to another game played in the arena, i.e., politics.
In the game of politics
· limited resources are the limited voting pool that different politicians are fighting for.
· advantageous traits are winning strategies that garner those votes.
· Lastly, equivalent to survival and reproduction is getting elected.
Strategies that succeed in cornering larger fraction of voting pool help in getting elected (and reelected). The advantageous strategies might also become speciated among the other, or in the next generation of politicians. For example, Trump using unique brand of politics, if continues to be successful, may become a widely followed strategy.
Extending this parallel between the game of evolution and politics is also the notion of discounting the future.
Similar to the fact that discounting the future is an advantageous trait for natural selection and evolution, it is also an advantageous strategy in the game of politics. In politics it is not advisable to appeal to the voters for the good of humanity 50 years from the present and hope to win. The advantageous strategies for winning the vote, by discounting the future, focus on the present good for the voting pool. [Note — it is only when the voting pool itself has the betterment of generation to come in their psyche that politicians will think about not discounting the future]
The consequence of discounting the future in politics, however, can be devastating. Living in the present, however, we do not realize how.
The consequences include runaway climate change because appealing to the good of the future at the expense of the current populace is not a winning strategy. The social security trust fund in the United States may be declining and may be only 10-years away from running short of pay off, and yet, since the solution for the future population may involve a sacrifice from the current generation, no politician wants to propose a solution on their watch.
And yet, while discounting the future, we keep debating about trivialities like abortion rights, legalizing pot etc. and keep going in circles. It is hard to realize that discounting the future may bring us to a dystopian future where current debate and conflicts would not even matter.
And so, although the game of politics and evolution have lots of parallels, discounting the future in the game of politics is a terrible strategy for the future of humanity.
Ciao.