Redefining Retirement

World Tennis No.1 Ashleigh Barty’s recent announcement of retirement from professional tennis at the age of 25 was ‘shocking’ breaking news for all media channels and social media. It is not the first time that a sports professional is retiring at the peak of his or her performance and fame. Yet, these are rare exceptions rather than the norm. Competitive sports as a career have a much limited span than other regular professions some of which do not even have any official retirement age.

Coming just a few weeks after winning the Australian Open, a first in 44 years for an Australian woman who won three Grand Slam titles in three different surfaces- Wimbledon, French and Australian Opens, Barty’s was a bold decision. She held the World No.1 position for 121 weeks and for three consecutive years at No.1.

Why now, why so soon? Barty articulated the answer as she felt ‘physically spent’ and having no ‘emotional want to challenge yourself at the very top level anymore’. Well, she will have her said reasons or unsaid reasons to take such a decision.

In recent history there are a few, still very few, such examples of professionals retiring at their peak and at a relatively young age. Let me take one more such extraordinary retirement of a sports star.

In 2016 the German-Finnish racing driver Nico Erik Rosberg announced his retirement just five days after winning the Formula-1 World Championship. That Rosberg’s father Keke Rosberg himself was the F1 World Champion in 1982 or that he was brought up in Monaco may be incidental to his illustrious racing career starting with competitive go-kart racing at the age of six, progressing into car racing at the age of 15 and winning nine races in 2002 at the age of 16. As teammates Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton had several F1 race wins and a much documented rivalry between them.

As teammates, Hamilton and Rosberg won 54 of 78 races over four seasons. Hamilton had 32 victories, 55 podium finishes and qualified ahead of Rosberg 42 times. Rosberg had 22 victories, 50 podium finishes and qualified ahead of Hamilton 36 times. During this period, Hamilton won the Formula One World Championship title twice, and Rosberg won the title once.

Retiring from F1 racing as a World Champion at the age of 31 is not something everyone would want to do. But for those who want to do they have their reasons. As for Rosberg, he too felt he achieved what he wanted, and wanted to focus on other things in life with his young family.

It is not that retirements make news only for the young. The old too can take such bold decisions to retire. When Pope Benedict XVI resigned as Pope in 2013 it was received as a shockingly extraordinary decision. And indeed, it was shockingly extraordinary if we look at the history of papacy in the Catholic Church. It was for the first time in more than 700 years a Catholic Pope was voluntarily resigning. Otherwise, in the modern era popes retired only on death. Pope Benedict XVI cited poor health related to old age as the reason for his resignation. While that is a genuine reason for any retirement in most professions, that was pretty much unusual for a Pope. The former Pope now known as Pope Emeritus leads a mostly private spiritual life after retirement. He himself has expressed his desire to be known as “Father Benedict”. He finds his fulfilment even beyond papacy.

These and other similar cases of extraordinary retirements point towards new possibilities of defining and defying retirements as we know the concept in its traditional sense. The industrial era brought with it certain definitions and limits of the concept of ‘work’. Retirement is one such. Work was defined as doing certain tasks for remuneration to accomplish set goals within a certain time limit and with specified starting age and retiring age. In the pre-industrial world retiring was more of a natural process of retiring hurt or retiring due to old age. In sports, entertainment or such voluntary and highly specialised professions fitness and winning chances determined voluntary or forced retirements. By and large most people followed the normal course of work and retirement.

Things have started changing in the last couple of decades for a small but growing number of professionals in different fields. People have started redefining success and fulfilment. Doing more of the same thing, going for the Nth championship title, multiplying the monetary rewards or being in the limelight of fame are not always the motivating forces for these small number of people. They have other ways of finding fulfilment which could be personal or even irrational to others. For long retirement was the opposite of work. Not anymore, even for the many regular retirees. Many of them ‘retire’ while they are physically and mentally active and they ‘retry’ different things rather than retiring from active life.

Recently someone met me for career guidance after over a decade long break from a corporate career. She asked me ‘are you retired?’ I said, ‘No. I stopped working’. I had to give a short explanation to make her understand the difference. I stopped working almost 12 years back and never allowed myself to be retired. I made a late entry into my corporate career and to compensate for that I made an early exit!

Alternative to work for many people used to be some other work for long time and even now for the most. But now for a small minority non-work is an alternative to work. Non-work need not mean being idle or being of no value. Non-work would mean to stay away from the limitations and the perks of work and find other meaningful or fulfilling activities, personal pursuits, or social engagements. This choice can now happen at any stage and at any age. That is why we now see youngsters starting up different things early on in their life while at the college or in their early corporate careers.

Work is getting redefined in many ways in the 21^st century, much faster than in the previous century. So, are all the other things related to work. Maybe in the 22^nd century humans may not need to work at all. Instead, they will go back to the Garden of Eden, the sandy beaches of the ocean or to the alluring snowy mountains while machines do all the work, much of the thinking, planning and management!

“When nothing is done, nothing is left undone.” - Lao Tsu

War, Peace, and Collective Morality

 Just as we are getting out of a devastating pandemic the world is in the grip of a war between Russia and Ukraine, as if we need uninterrupted misery. Every war has its own reasons. But should there be war in the 21^st century world? The answer may be ‘No’ but the actions go the opposite direction.

After the end of World War-II the world has witnessed a relatively peaceful coexistence with sporadic limited-edition wars, localised conflicts between nations and prolonged civil conflicts in many nations with military and diplomatic interventions from bigger nations.

There are several theories that explain this prolonged era of relative peace. One is that the human and economic consequences of the two world wars in the first half of the 20^th century remained live in the minds of two or three generations of people reducing the propensity for war. The other theory is that after the World War-II several nations came out of colonial rule and became independent and mostly democratic focusing more on the social and economic welfare of their citizens. These or other such theories may have been partially true for many nations for several decades.

Paradoxically, the birth of several new nations in the 20^th century also planted seeds of ultra- nationalism leading to expansionist rivalries and ethnic identities. The other post World War-II trend is the continued rise and growth of the defence industry both in the government sector and in the private sector often working collaboratively to mutual benefit. Peace is the enemy of ‘progress’ for the defence establishment. And continued peace will in fact lead to the death of the weapons industry. Thus, war is often seen as matter of national pride and a means of power and prosperity for some.

Most of us individually want peace and prosperity. But the powerful want war for prosperity and they don’t care what happens to posterity. And we the ‘peace loving’ individuals too collectively want to win the war for our nation. It doesn’t matter another nation is defeated, devastated, or occupied or all these three put together. We will be proud of our brave soldiers, government, and the weapon’s establishment. And in the event of our nation being defeated we will still feel proud of our ‘brave soldiers’ who laid their lives for us and build one more war memorial. And, of course, we will for ever keep our grudge against the winning nation and await the next best opportunity to strike.

Surprisingly a war is a good time for a lot of moral discourse. While the nations will be divided in their loyalties to the warring nations all of them will indulge in some collective moral grandstanding. Even those who support the war would propose peace as their objective. It is, therefore, not funny to hear Vladimir Putin saying that his country is engaging in a war against the small neighbour to avoid the World War-III. How noble a thought it is! Other nations while supporting one of these warring nations will indulge in providing humanitarian aid to the suffering and to quickly evacuate their nationals stuck in the war zone. And almost every nation will enhance their military and weapons budget. No one in power will seriously advocate to reduce defence budget or stop production and trade of weapons of mass destruction. The START (Strategic Arms Reduction Talk) has only ended up in talk while weapons industry grew well globally. The core of all diplomatic actions by nations is their own national interest. Nothing more. Nothing less. That is diplomatic morality if one can call it morality. All collective morality stops at the national border.

For most of the public, it is hard to get the whole truth during a war. Each side will create their own version of truth. In the age of digital media minting and disseminating misinformation or manufactured truth is a lot easier. Governments everywhere have a penchant for controlling media and the more autocratic the government the greater its control over media. In fact, every war is a war of misinformation. In such a context the collective morality is built over misinformation and motivated lies.

Well, philosophers will say that peace is not the absence of war and spiritual leaders will say that one could be at peace even during a war. Peace is an ‘inner’ thing- be at peace with self, with others and with God…and yet go out to wage a war for the sake of peace, for the sake of truth!

How do we make sense out of these paradoxes?

Not easy. Human race evolved from a tribal ancestry and the underlying collective emotion is tribal. In the recent centuries such tribal emotions have expanded up to the scale of a nation in many cases and sub-nationalities within large nations. It is harder for anyone of us to think humanity as priority, when we have a family, a community, religion, region, ethnicity, language, and a nation to belong to. With a constitution, a huge number of laws and government machinery we can protect the concept of the nation in some sense. But there are no such binding rules beyond that.

And there are no world leaders- worthy or worthless! All leaders are tribal or clannish while some of whom wear the mantle of national leaders. Yet, there is no dearth of literature on world peace and international brotherhood. "The whole world is one family", 'We are children of the same God', "Loka Samasta Suhkino Bhavantu", and " We are part of The International Community"- as if there is one such thing! All that is fiction, slogan, and poetry. But let us keep dreaming and let the imagination fly high. One day, there won’t be any need for war!

“You cannot prepare for war and peace at the same time.”- Albert Einstein