21 Letters on Life and Its Challenges

by Charles Handy

  All this is by way of emphasising that money and fulfilment are uneasy bedfellows. I had long ago realised that my early dream of finding work that I loved doing, with agreeable companions and adequate money, was just that: a dream. Few will find that unlikely combination, although if you have a professional vocation you are in with a chance. I eventually stopped searching for that elusive perfect job and realised that I had to combine two or three different types of work, what I called a work portfolio, to get the right combination of money, enjoyment and fulfilment. I discovered that my conference talks were, eventually, enough by themselves to cover my cost of living. My real work, I insisted, was my books, even if they did not sell. I called it a three-part work portfolio, a word that came to be increasingly popular in the changing world of work.

  I recommend the portfolio idea to you if, like me, you can’t find the ideal job. Find something that you can do for money for part of your time, leaving enough space to do what you really want to do. Just be careful that you do not get too seduced by the money bit. Life is too precious to waste it on making money.

  LETTER 16

  ‘WE’ BEATS ‘I’ ALL THE TIME

  I hope that you will be lucky enough to go through life saying ‘we’ more often than ‘I’. Companionship is so important, to have someone with whom you can share your hopes and uncertainties. It does not have to be a life partner. It can be your family, a work group or a whole organisation, even a movement. In another letter I mentioned Robin Dunbar’s idea that you can have a maximum of five best friends and fifteen good friends. These will be the most important ‘we’ in your life. These people, particularly the first five, will be your anchors in life, keeping you upright when life seems to be falling around you. These few know you too well to be deceived by your false ambitions. You can be completely honest with them. You are walking life together, so bond them to you tightly and treat them kindly.

  Friendship has been cherished down the ages. Shakespeare famously has Polonius give this advice to his son Laertes in Hamlet:

  Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,

  Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;

  But do not dull thy palm with entertainment

  Of each new-hatch’d, unfledged comrade.

  Francis Bacon said that without true friends the world is but a wilderness. He went on:

  The light that a man receiveth by counsel from another is drier and purer than that which cometh from his own understanding … [for] a man cannot speak to his son but as a father; to his wife but as a husband; to his enemy but upon terms: whereas a friend may speak as the case requires …

  I must apologise on his behalf for his concentration on the male. He was a creature of his time and I’m sure now that he would say the same of a woman. A true friend will speak truth to you, even when it hurts. I used to comb my hair to conceal my increasing baldness. I looked ridiculous. No one said anything, neither my wife nor my kids. Finally, a friend told me to own up. ‘You are bald,’ she said, ‘don’t try to pretend you are not.’ That truth really did set me free, once I had accepted it.

  If you are lucky you may discover an older friend who will become your guide and mentor for part of your life, someone who has spotted the best in you and wants to encourage it. In my own experience there have been three people who have helped me over the threshold of a new life: a schoolmaster who made sure I went to university; a boss who had such confidence in me that he promoted me to a full professorship before I had done enough to deserve it (‘You will have to justify my decision after the appointment,’ he said); and another who introduced me to America. I owe to them a large chunk of my life and will always be grateful. The Hindu philosophy would say that I can best repay them by doing the same service to others. This I now try to do.

  Most of your close friends, however, will be of the same age and sex because they are those who are most likely to have shared some life-shaping experience with you. The bonds are created by shared experiences. You may have shared rooms at university, been in the same team, climbed mountains linked to each other, depended on each other in some way that pulled you together. It took me a long while to have a friendship with a woman without the idea of sex being there in the background because that was the only experience we might have shared, although it was seldom life-shaping or long-lasting. Later I found that my sex-free friendships with women were often the most rewarding because they helped me to look at the world from very different angles.

  My wife was definitely my best friend. Did it help that we were married? Of course – this was the life-shaping experience we shared for fifty-five years. There was also something reassuring in the thought that we were bonded together by law and a public commitment. More than that, however, our lives were bonded together by a shared commitment, to each other and to our children and, later, to our grandchildren. Without that shared commitment it would not have worked. Of course, there is also love, but love, once the passion dies away, is the physical and emotional expression of togetherness, of the ‘we’. One of my people-watching games is to count the number of ‘I’s and ‘we’s someone uses in their conversation. You learn a lot about people by listening.

  What people don’t tell you, however, is that to enjoy the undoubted benefits of ‘we’ in any relationship, be it a partnership, a close friendship or a work group, you have to first invest in it. There can be no free ride in a true togetherness. To get you first have to give, and you can only give if you care, and, ideally, care more for the other than yourself. The poet Philip Larkin put it well:

  We should be careful

  Of each other, we should be kind

  While there is still time.

  Kindness is the glue of friendship. You can argue with a friend, disagree with their political or religious views, as long as you do it kindly, respecting their right to disagree with you. As I mentioned before, the Scottish philosopher David Hume said that truth proceeds from arguments between friends. He was right. I have learnt so much from my arguments with my friends, often surprising myself with what I come out with; ‘How do I know what I think until I hear what I say,’ the Irishman said. It’s the same in marriage; the best marriages are often a blend of complementary but different contributions, as was ours. The new freedom for couples to go beyond the stereotyped roles of husband and wife and explore new combinations can often lead to a better togetherness.

  We used to divide our friends into two groups: the drains and the radiators. Drains sap your energy, leaving you wondering when they will leave. The radiators are the ones who, when we meet, enrich our lives with their conversation, their ideas and their energy. It’s a bit unfair since even the most boring of drains can come alive if we are able to find a topic that interests them or even if we just choose to focus on them and their concerns for a while. Get people to smile and their whole face lights up. More crucially our little game was a way of reminding ourselves to be more radiator than drain in our own friendships. Mostly, I discovered, it is a matter of energy, how much of it I was prepared to invest in a person or a situation. Occasionally, with family for instance, it was tempting to relax, opt out or just coast along with the conversation. Then I would pull myself up short. Why was I being so disrespectful to my nearest and dearest, taking their interest in me for granted? Radiators are always welcome; drains are tolerated at best.

  The ‘we’ carries over into the workplace, even when it isn’t an actual place. When I did a study of entrepreneurs they all agreed that they could not have done it on their own, even if they were the ones who had the original idea. I have already argued that small is best but for small to work the groups have to be teams. Teams are groups with a shared purpose in which each member has their own individual contribution to make. They are a looser form of friendship but function best when there is a real commitment to a shared purpose and a respect for each other’s contribution.

  The best illustration that I can give you of how a team should work is provided by a
rowing eight on the river. There are eight people in the boat, or in fact nine if you include the cox. The interesting thing about the boat is how the leadership changes as the task changes. There is no one leader, something that other organisations might note. There is, it is true, the captain of the boat. He or she is the official leader, largely responsible for representing the crew to the world as well as choosing the members. He or she is, however, only the first among equals once the boat is on the river, often rowing in the middle of the boat. The leadership task then devolves on to the stroke, who sets the pace for the others. But there is also the cox, the one person who is in the boat but does not row. He or she is, however, the only person who can see where they are going and therefore is responsible for steering the boat. There is then one more person: the coach. He or she isn’t in the boat at all but gives advice from the bank or in briefing sessions before or after.

  The rowing eight is, in my view, the ideal model for a team. Individuals are chosen for their individual contribution but have to work closely together or the whole does not work. Some years ago Oxford recruited a team of international rowers, who happened to be studying at the university, to make up the crew in the traditional boat race against Cambridge. These international stars felt no need to join the rest of the group for early-morning training. They were the experts, kindly lending their talents to the team. It did not work; eight self-described stars do not a team make. They would have had to subordinate their egos to the group effort for it to work. They were dropped from the team shortly before the race and a younger, less experienced crew selected. The new crew made up in their dedication and commitment for what they lacked in individual talent or experience. They won the race, proving that ‘we’ beats ‘I’ if ‘we’ are a team.

  It is the same in the arts and in other team sports. The actor or musician or player who attempts to steal the show will not only ruin the show but also his or her own reputation. Tennis players, however good they are, will build a team around them and even the best will have a coach. No one is too good not to need to learn. Other organisations should take heed. Small groups, changing leadership, a common focus and a clear objective: it is a recipe for excellence. Note, too, the role of the outside coach and the regular briefing sessions. No one is so good that they have no need of an outside perspective, nor should any activity go without regular reviews. It is a comradeship based on trust and shared interests. If you find yourself in such a group you will be fortunate. Later on, given the chance and the responsibility, you would be wise to make every effort to create rowing eight type groups.

  My wife died recently. For the first time in over half a century I am on my own. It feels very strange. I can’t say I’m lonely because I have many people who come to see me, invite me out, go to theatres or concerts with me, but the togetherness has gone, the sense of a shared life or a common project. There is, it is true, a certain freedom; I don’t have to think about the other person when I am making decisions: I can go to bed when I like, eat what I choose, see whom I like. But the freedom does not compensate for the lack of togetherness. Of course, my wife is still around in my head. I think of her almost every moment, still doing all the things that we used to do in the way she liked. I still look across to her chair to see if she is asleep during the television news, as she used to be. I still hear her voice in my ear as I plan a trip or agree to a piece of work. I still imagine her reading this and giving me her frank opinion, for good or ill.

  I have lost my best friend. Perhaps you only know how special someone or something is when you have lost it. So it is with friendship. Never take it for granted. Cherish those special friends. You will miss them if they go.

  LETTER 17

  WHEN TWO BECOME ONE

  It is my wish for you that you should, in due course, fall in love and enter a long and committed relationship, whether you call it marriage or something else. As a foundation for life and a future family there is nothing better, although, like every relationship, it won’t always be easy. The best thing I can do to help is to give you the story of how it worked for me, in the hope that you can learn something from it.

  It was a day laden with romance, of anxiety mixed with joy. It was my wedding day. We had made promises to each other, raised glasses, cut a cake and waved goodbye to assembled guests. We were on our way. To what? We had never sat down and talked about it, about what it would be like, who would do what and what would be the priorities. We were good together. We would go on being good together. No need to spoil it all with plans and job descriptions as if it was a business. Being fifty years ago, it was just assumed that my career would have priority, would determine where we would live and how we would live. She, Elizabeth, would have the main responsibility for the home, and for the children when and if they came. Whatever interests and talents she would develop, and there were to be many, would have to be fitted into her domestic priorities and my life. I assumed that she thought so too. I don’t remember asking her.

  Looking back, it was incredibly selfish of me, particularly as my career took me into ever more absorbing areas, from business to academia to working for the Church. What added to the problem was that each job came with less, not more, remuneration than the last. That left Elizabeth to fill the growing financial gap, which she always and valiantly did, running her own interior design business and later leasing and letting out a succession of small apartments, all whilst still managing the home front. As one result, I never gave her any money to buy food or household necessities. She took care of all those out of her earnings, leaving me to look after the regular outgoings: the mortgage, the utilities, the repairs and, of course, the booze. That was unusual. My father had given my mother a regular monthly allowance, which she was expected to account for. I remember her agonising over her accounts, trying to remember what she had spent on what. A frequent item seemed to be SPG, which I took to stand for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, a missionary charity dear to my parents’ hearts, until my mother confessed one day that it stood for Something Probably Grub!

  In that respect we had moved on, or society had. I was not the boss in the home, even if I was still the main anchor of our lives outside it. Yet, once again, we never formally negotiated these arrangements. They just emerged as circumstances dictated. I am ashamed, now, at how little I contributed to the domestic scene, leaving early in the morning in our only car, returning late in the evening after the children had gone to bed, letting my wife take the children to school on her bicycle, to do all the shopping and housework and still find time for her work. But we were both the children of our time and that was the widely understood pattern of marriage among our friends and colleagues.

  Why did we not discuss it more formally, I wonder? We had made that set of vows and promises to each other in front of a bunch of our friends and relatives, a contract to love and care for each other, but the detailed specifics of what and how had never been spelt out. The necessary appendix to the formal contract had been omitted. Like almost everyone else, we made it up as we went along. As we did so, we began to realise that we each had different notions of what that appendix should contain. Because we had never spoken these thoughts out loud, mutual resentments smouldered and occasionally flared up.

  The truth is that every relationship is based around an implicit contract, a balance of expectations. Unless these are made clear, misunderstandings are inevitable. Moreover, the contracts need to be fair to each party. Many years earlier, in the course of my business career, I had to negotiate a contract with a Chinese agent in Malaysia. We agreed the terms, shook hands and shared the traditional glass of brandy. I then took out the official company contract form for him to sign. He was indignant. ‘What is that for?’ he said angrily. ‘Don’t you trust me? The contract will only work if both of us get what we want out if it. A signature should be unnecessary. In fact, it makes me suspect that you think you have got a better deal than me and want to lock me into it.’ I persuaded him that it was only a
company formality, but I took his point. I have never forgotten it. If both parties don’t feel the deal is fair it won’t stick, in business or in relationships. We would have avoided much unhappiness had I remembered my Chinese contract experience, if I had made a series of deals as we went through life, deals that gave both of us enough of what we wanted to ensure that the contract worked. That original Chinese contract was also time limited. It had to be renegotiated in due course. So it is with those implicit marriage contracts. Circumstances change. Jobs change. Kids grow up. People die or fall ill.

  So it was for us. When I was fifty I ran out of jobs. There were none that I wanted that might want me. Too young and too poor to retire, I became a self-employed writer and lecturer. The freedom was exciting but the income precarious and I found it embarrassing to ask for it. My wife came to the rescue. She became my agent and business manager and was very good at it. So good, in fact, that I got both busier and richer. Until the day when she in effect gave in her notice. Her life, she said, had become submerged in mine. She had recently graduated with a degree in photography after five years of part-time study, and now wanted to fulfil her dream of becoming a professional portrait photographer. My wife was now on her way, even if it had taken her most of the first fifty years of her life to get there. Largely my fault, of course.