Is play meaningful? A comment on the purposeful life.

I blame St Paul:

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

Those childish things are mostly about play, about the enjoyable but idle wasting of time with mere fun. And, in the stern puritan world of today, such things are not meaningful, play is not meaningful. Adults should be doing purposeful things that 'contribute' not frivolous fripperies, not leisure and pleasure.

Here's US "medical ethicist" (I've no idea either) and architect of 'Obamacare', Ezekiel Emmanuel:

These people who live a vigorous life to 70, 80, 90 years of age—when I look at what those people “do,” almost all of it is what I classify as play. It’s not meaningful work. They’re riding motorcycles; they’re hiking. Which can all have value—don’t get me wrong. But if it’s the main thing in your life? Ummm, that’s not probably a meaningful life.

This contains all the essential elements of the puritan - we live to work, to do purposeful and meaningful things. This is what matters not riding a motorbike or hiking the Sierras. Play is not what grown ups should do, we put away those childish things and did serious, sensible grown up projects, the things that constitute a meaningful life.

I retired this year because I'd had enough of what I was doing and am fortunate to be in a financial situation allowing me to do so. On Emmanuel's assessment, I'm no longer living a meaningful life. I've picked up those childish things again - going for walks, travelling to new places, playing Dungeons & Dragons, enjoying the place I live and time with friends and neighbours. There's a point when you realise that nothing much you do actually matters and it is strangely liberating.

Emmanuel's observation is his view as to what constitutes a meaningful life (or rather, since he doesn't say what his meaningful life contains, what doesn't constitute a meaningful life and the interviewer makes no attempt to extract an answer that might help). But I don't see playing games, enjoying the beauty of the world, spending time with family and friends as thing without meaning. In fact, compared to most folk's routine job, these are far more important and contain more meaning.

All this reflects the obsession with productivity as the sole measure of purpose. We're told that we're not productive enough and that this won't do at all, yet we're happier spending leisure time than we are with the drudge of our work. So, yes (and not for the first time) St Paul is wrong, or at least misunderstood. There is as much purpose in consumption, in the pleasures of life as there is in those dry tasks that puritans like Emmanuel consider meaningful.

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Labour's plan - tax the poor to pay for the care of the wealthy.

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Fresh from championing recipients of housing benefit earning over fifty grand, Labour is now planning to be the hero of the relatively wealthy. Apparently, the proposals on social care - where how much we might have to cough up is capped at £75,000 and people with £125,000 or less in assets will receive state help - still mean that people will have to sell their home.

I'm fine with this. What possesses people like Andy Burnham to believe that the taxes paid by people on minimum wage should go to pay to care for someone sitting in a house worth hundreds of thousands? Does he really think it justifiable - I mean morally - for a struggling family to pay taxes so someone else can inherit mum's house? Is it really OK that government borrowong climbs through the roof - taxing future generations of children - so someone can leave their "life savings" fructifying in some investment fund?

If there's one thing that makes me cross it's the assumption that these assets, these savings are simply there so people can inherit the cash. Surely those assets and savings are precisely there to look after mum or dad in their lifetime - to provide comfort, to secure care and to provide a little pleasure.

So rather than talking rubbish about family homes and nonsense about life savings, sit down with your parents and talk about how to use that money to make the last years of their lives less or a worry, more of a comfort. And stop counting the money in their bank and expecting the poor to pay higher taxes so you can inherit that cash.

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Funding care - or how to lose friends quickly...

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From the Centre for Social Justice (so not to be sniffed at given its links to Iain Duncan Smith):

...we are consumed by a debate about how to protect the housing wealth of people who might need care in the future. Such a narrow focus about care funding ducks the crucial question: how do we build a competent and compassionate social care system fit for all, including the poorest?

Indeed, the entire aim appears to be avoiding having to tell nice middle-class folk like me that they'll have to sell mum's house when she goes into a home. Which of course means we won't inherit that money.

If we were not protected by the knowledge that taxpayers we've never met will cough up to provide us with care in our dotage then we would make provision ourselves. And be prepared to sell the house.

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"I can't dig the garden like I used to..." - some thoughts on getting older.

I thought that, for a change, I’d write about getting old. And how our attitude to age – and the process of getting older – changes and evolves. But first a little story from my Mum.

Many years ago – back in the 1970s – my Mum delivered meals-on-wheels in and around Penge. On one of the rounds there was a couple called Mr & Mrs Squirrel. Rest assured that these are human squirrels rather than the beady-eyed, bushy-tailed variety. Now Mr & Mrs Squirrel were well into their nineties – which back then was deifinitely a ripe old age – and lived in a sizeable house in Sydenham (or rather that bit of Penge that folk liked to call Sydenham so as to avoid using the ‘P’ word).

On one occasion, my Mum was delivering Mr & Mrs Squirrel’s dinner and she got to chatting with Mister. He explained how – it being a nice day and all – he had been out in the garden pottering about. After a few minutes chatting about the garden (my Mum being an especially keen gardener), Mr Squirrel complained that:

“I can’t dig the garden like I used to.”

And therein lies the point. This elderly – very elderly – gentleman refused to accept that the things he did in days past were no longer possible. Digging the garden may take a little longer, he might not be able to dig as deep or turn as much soil but we’re going to dig! And so it should be.

However, as we age, society still expects us to become less able and more dependent until we reach a point when in our dribbling, dotage others must care for us entirely. And much planning for this seems to assume that old age begins at 50.

I’m not joking here – nor am I moaning about the rapidity at which my 50th birthday approaches. Planning for services assumes that someone aged 51 has similar needs to someone aged 97 (ceteris paribus). Housing strategies for older people begin at 50. Saga holidays begin at 50. We are old at 50!

Except we’re not. Old that is – not even remotely old. Most 50 year olds in England can expect to live at least another 30 years – nearly all of those years independent and active. While three of my four grand parents were dead by the age of 76, my son’s grandparents are all alive and all past that age (with three passed 80). And all those people are living in their own homes, driving their own cars, feeding themselves and getting on with enjoying life. In truth they place a little more of a burden on health services – the jokes about rattling with pills do apply – but they are not old in the way previous generations were old.

All this is a good thing – unquestionably. But costly. The entire system of pensions, healthcare and social care is predicated on most people dying in the ‘70s rather than – as will be more and more the case – in their ‘80s or even ‘90s. And, as medical and surgical interventions allow (wonderfully) further extension to active life, those costs will continue to rise.

The question for us all is how much longer the present system can last until it breaks beyond repair. We can’t carry on with the assumption that our property assets will remain undisturbed by the costs of old age. And we have to recognise that pension schemes beginning at ages below 60 are unsustainable. We must also question why we have not raised the retirement age for the ‘active’ professions – police, fire, army and so forth. Finally, we will get used to the idea of people working well into their ‘70s – perhaps not full time but working nonetheless.

The market – as we see from adverts, new products and the images of older people used therein – has already got there. Sadly, the public sector – and the delivery of its services – remains stuck in the 1970s. Time to catch up I guess?

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