Life Happens to You

Today is when my boxes of papers and files are to be moved from the assisted living facility in Millbrae to a storage locker closer by. My son is driving down there from the city to claim the stuff.

Work on my memoir has been effectively stalled since March 20 when I left that facility, my journals strewn on the floor next to the chair where I wrote, watched the news, ate meals, and admired the view, which stretched northward.

My whole life hinged then on that one chair. Now I sit in a different chair.

It's confusing to think back to what I imagined being retired and writing that book would be like, because all assumptions basically ended with the arrival of the pandemic.  But I know the prospect held a dream-like appeal for me in the years I was wrapping up my career.

One of life's illusions that some of us hold onto longer than others is that we control our own destiny; that we make life happen, when in reality, the opposite is true. Life happens on us.

We are in control of so little it would be comical if the cost weren't so high. One of life's impossible lessons for those of us with a certain kind of nature is that while we can control many little things in this world, we really don't control anything big.

It is one thing for me to write about that lesson but quite another to have learned it for myself. When it comes to my report card on that subject it's at best a D- at this point.

My daughter was telling her kids recently 'You don't learn things the first time you hear them. You have to hear them over and over."

That goes for all of us. I'm still learning the lesson about control.

With all the raw material in a storage locker, I may not resume my memoir-writing for a long time so I will continue with my Facebook essays instead. Doing this feels like we are all locked down in the rooms of our cruise ship. You can't leave your room and I can't leave mine.

But we can exchange thoughts and feelings thanks to the Internet and this interface created by people including Mark Zuckerberg.

The problem with our cruise ship is that it is an illusion that we are going anywhere or will ever arrive there alive. This ship is turning slowly in circles with no destination in mind. And the owner/captain of our ship is Zuck.

So tihis is what the clear waters of paradise look like.

***

My grandchildren were describing the nature of the new world should they have any say in the matter. One component they agreed on was "We wouldn't have to social distance with our friends." Notice how what was once a noun has become a verb; linguists call that verification.

The children have other thoughts. About school, for instance. The education system is most definitely going to be transformed by this pandemic. Some new combination of learning in person and learning remotely is going to have to be found.

That in turn is going to affect work, at least for those who are trying to raise children while they do their jobs. Workplaces has been hierarchical for so long that we take that for granted, but that may have to change. Cracks in that paradigm have been appearing for decades.

As the Baby Boomers launched new organizations in the 70s and beyond, we experimented with a more collectivist approach to managing our workplaces. Unions had long existed but they were predicated on Marx's theory about the opposition of capital and labor, whereas our work concepts explored a merging of these forces.

The information technology revolution accelerated that experimentation. We started hearing more about "flat" decision-making structures, rather than hierarchies.

The need for a chain of command always seems to reassert itself. But it's not the disparity in power that is undermining American democracy; it is the disparity in wealth. Of course one leads to the other.

***

Another hard lesson to learn in life concerns money. How to save it and how to invest it. Being good at one does not necessarily equate with being good at the other.

These days, those of us who are retired and living on fixed incomes can only watch helplessly as the markets swerve wildly as if trying to avoid an onrushing truck.

Well, maybe we are not helpless. This is definitely not a good time to be spending money gratuitously, or to withdraw funds from the stock market, unless no other options are apparent.

Money markets are like water pails sloshing on the deck of a boat. When they settle, the levels are back to where they used to be, and since more rains will be coming, they will gradually increase in volume over time.

Already, I am told, the U.S. stock markets have recovered half of the losses YTD they had sustained by a month ago. Give them a few months more and you should be whole again.

Then again, why listen to me? I'm not a stockbroker, just the spinner of bad metaphors. Then again, I do know a thing or two about rainy weather, old pails, boats, waves and how to swerve when a truck is headed your way.

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