How To Control Your Life

Part 19

By God, I was energetic. The sleepy methods of this place made my blood tingle. I went about and everywhere I saw possibilities for development and enterprise. There were fortunes to be made here. It seemed to me absurd that the copra should be taken away from here in sacks and the oil extracted in America. It would be far more economical to do all that on the spot, with cheap labour, and save freight, and I saw already the vast factories springing up on the island. Then the way they extracted it from the coconut seemed to me hopelessly inadequate and I invented a machine which divided the nut and scooped out the meat at the rate of two hundred and forty an hour. The harbour was not large enough. I made plans to enlarge it, then to form a syndicate to buy land, put up two or three large hotels, and bungalows for occasional residents; I had a scheme for improving the steamer service in order to attract visitors from California. In twenty years, instead of this half-French, lazy little town of Papeete I saw a great American city with ten-storey buildings and street-cars, a theatre and an opera house, a stock exchange and a mayor.’

‘But go ahead, Edward,’ cried Bateman, springing up from the chair in excitement. ‘You’ve got the ideas and the capacity. Why, you’ll become the richest man between Australia and the States.’

Edward chuckled softly. ‘But I don’t want to” he said.

The Fall of Edward Barnard by W. Somerset Maugham

In the 1990s, after the frantic boom years in the City of London (derivatives and deregulation, Big Bang, technology and more technology, Yuppies and bonuses, rivers of champagne through the City), a phenomenon known as ‘downsizing’ happened. People for whom the house and its location, the luxury car, membership of the ‘right’ clubs, the designer clothes and jewellery, and the brand names on everything had mattered to the pinnacle of desire suddenly shed most of it and decamped. They decamped to the country - albeit often in a rather Marie Antoinette fashion - to smallholdings, fairly utilitarian four-wheel drive vehicles and a life centred round the new homestead. People who had hardly seen their luxury homes and prestige pied-à-terre pads because they’d spent their waking hours in the office, the restaurant or the squash court (or anywhere else networking was humanly possible), let alone seen their partners, were suddenly spending their days and nights at home, in the country, with only their partners.

It was pretty drastic but, surprisingly, for many it actually worked. Of course there was the occasional divorce when people found that, quite apart from not knowing each other they actually didn’t like each other, and a certain amount of re-upsizing (so discreet an operation that it never even had a name) to a slightly less rural idyll (“Perhaps just move somewhere we can get to the theatre without needing a Sherpa?”), but many of the downsizers stayed were they’d landed because they liked what they’d found.

They had the money, of course. If you can buy the house outright, renovate and adapt it, stock the smallholding, employ a few local staff to make life comfortable, then the living is easy and the adaptation process fairly breezy - and Porsches and Rolexes could be exchanged for the necessary funds without too much heartbreak.

However it was still brave. Even though it was a ‘movement’ - there were other people in the same boat - the destinations were different and it was a tremendous leap from City designer suits on the streets of London to wellies and muddy open fields; from the constant swarm and buzz of other people to the silence and solitude of the English countryside in Winter. People who had led highly structured and competitive lives were suddenly forced to make their own decisions in the absence of anybody else’s input or direction. The office was at home, just a short step away from the bedroom or kitchen, and it was silent. Those people had to make it all happen for themselves - every day.

They were lucky, the downsizers, in many ways. They were able to take the money and run because the money was there - but they did make the decision and take the chance.

There is still, a hangover from those boom days of the rivers of money rushing through the City, a section in the Financial Times called ‘how to spend it’ and one in MoneyWeek called ‘Spending It’. Having more money than you know how to spend is not necessarily a comfortable situation; it begs questions and shines lights on uncomfortable areas. Who are you, really, away from your things?

If you’re looking round to find things on which you can spend surplus money, there’s a good chance you’re out of control of your life.

Someone I once knew, let’s call him Nick, had an excellent brain, a personable character, good looks (it does count) and - almost surprisingly - strong accounting qualifications. He was also around in the boom time at just the right age to have a big slice of the City had he wanted it - but he didn’t. Instead he used to ‘temp’ as an accountant for anyone who would pay him above a certain threshold which he set for himself (and they did pay), and he would work until he had amassed an certain amount of money which he also set. Then he would go to Brazil. He loved Brazil. Brazil, he said, was his spiritual home.

Nick didn’t do much to speak of in Brazil (and probably did a few things now and again which definitely weren’t to speak of but he was young, and good-looking and that was in another country…). Nick just swam and bummed around on the beach, spent lazy afternoons talking to the locals and anyone else passing by, and lived life the way he liked it, in Brazil.

When the money ran out Nick would come home again to England and London and the offices and the life of temporary accountant and do it all over again.

If Nick’s mother ever complained that, after all that education and all those qualifications, he wasn’t doing anything with his life he would grin at her, give her a hug, and just be Nick. Other people frankly envied him. Brazil’s national income was a touch the better for his existence.

If someone had given Nick a lot of money after he’d finished university, or he’d inherited it or won it, what would he have done? He would have gone to Brazil and lived the life he was living when I knew him. The money wouldn’t have made any difference. That’s the way it should be; that’s how to control your life.

When you know how you want to live your life, working out how to live that way is relatively easy. As long as you don’t get caught up with the money thing, or the prestige thing, or the “What will the neighbours/people at work/my father say?” thing. If you have to beaver away to support a lifestyle habit (the right car, the right labels, the right house, the right location), you’re being controlled not being in control.

Being in control of your life is not going round in circles. If Somerset Maugham’s Edward Bernard had gone ahead with his plans for the copra processing, finished designing the copra cutter and processor, the factories and the harbour, he would have made himself a rich - and respected - man. He would also have changed the beautiful island into another centre of industry and been busy all day, every day, and all his ‘working life’. What he really wanted: leisure and a beautiful place to live and time to interact with the native islanders and other lotus eaters, would have vanished; he would have changed it, distorted it, and all his money could not have brought it back. He would, when he finally retired, have had to find another island and hoped that he could recapture some of the first fine careless rapture even though the time for enjoying it had gone.

If money can’t buy the very thing you want, it’s worthless; if the search for it destroys that very thing, that really is a vicious circle.

They say of me, and so they should,
It’s doubtful if I come to good.
I see acquaintances and friends
Accumulating dividends
And making enviable names
In science, art and parlor games.
But I, despite expert advice,
Keep doing things I think are nice,
And though to good I never come -
Inseparable my nose and thumb.

Neither Bloody Nor Bowed by Dorothy Parker