Every day is a blessing

Reading the reports that are coming out of the USA are scary. These are not the reports of the Pandemic, but the response to the ideas of physical isolation that is meant to save lives, hat some on the right are putting out.

”TV and radio personality Glenn Beck is urging older Americans to return to work to keep the economy going despite the coronavirus infection risks.

“Younger people, he said, could stay home to protect themselves from the virus that causes COVID-19 while older people ― who the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says are more prone to the most serious cases ― should keep working.”

Beck seemed to be following the lead of Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick who, earlier that day,

”...went on Fox News to argue that he would rather die than see public health measures damage the US economy and that he believed 'lots of grandparents' across the country would agree with him”, reports The Guardian.

“My message: let’s get back to work, let’s get back to living, let’s be smart about it, and those of us who are 70-plus, we’ll take care of ourselves,” Lt Gov Dan Patrick, a 69-year-old Republican, told Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Monday night.”  

This is scary, but in we have to have a positive attitude. One of the people I know said to me this morning that every day that he is breathing is a good day, and laughed. I have been very lucky in my life to have met and worked with some wonderful people who have had to overcome many illnesses. Many of these people believe that having a good attitude helped them survive and defeat the illness that they faced. I believe they are partially correct, attitude is an important part of how we deal with life.

I counsel that we cannot control how others behave, all we can do is control how we react to the behaviour. However, if one is sick, or tired, or depressed then our ability to control our own reactions is limited. I have a friend who believes that balance is one of the four (Spirituality, Health, Relationships and Work) important aspects of life. 

Easy to say, hard to do, I am not a spiritual person, so I find it hard to work that aspect into the balance that I seek. I strive to balance, relationships, health, and work so perhaps I am not a square, but a triangle. I think the idea of spirituality residing outside of one's self is interesting but not relevant to many of my generation. I believe that if one should seek spirituality within, by the way, we see ourselves and how we interact with others and our environment. Many of us are on the phenomenal plane and in the pursuit of pleasure, but the pursuit of pleasure sometimes brings pain. Maybe we should be searching for Bliss.

On the phenomenal plane, we seek pleasure and the avoidance of pain. On the noumenal plane, we know the absence of both - which is Bliss. - Why Lazurus Laughed by Wei Wu Wei.

How did corporate pension plans do in 2019?

Do you have a corporate pension plan in Canada, then you may be interested in a report Liabilities mostly offset high returns around the globe, posted in Pension and Investments on January 20th? This report goes into great detail about many countries so if you are not Canadian, you may want to go to the link and read up on your country. 

A pension plan with a traditional 60/40 mix — composed of 20% in Canadian equities, 40% in global equities and 40% in "Canadian universe" bonds, rebalanced monthly — would have enjoyed a 15.7% return, but the lowest long-term bonds yields in more than 60 years offset much of those gains by boosting pension liabilities as well, said Andrew Kitchen, a Toronto-based managing director, institutional Canada, for Russell Investments Canada.

For the year, the solvency ratio of Canadian defined benefit pension plans only improved to 94% from 92% the year before, he said.

All-time lows for Canadian bond yields in 2019 led to all-time highs for corporate defined benefit pension obligations, with a 15% jump in liabilities over the past year alone, said Andrew Whale, a Toronto-based principal in Mercer Canada's financial strategy group in a review of corporate DB plans over the past year.

The median solvency ratio for Mercer's corporate pension clients in Canada rose to 98% from 93%. By Mercer's estimates, a typical balanced pension fund in 2019 would have delivered a 17.4% investment return.

Consultants at both Russell and Mercer said the boost in pension liabilities on the balance sheets of companies with DB plans has left corporate executives focusing more on options such as pension buyouts or pension risk transfers. The cost premium of settling DB obligations by purchasing an annuity over keeping that DB obligations on the balance sheet have shrunk and "we have seen their appetite for annuities increase tremendously," said Mercer's Mr. Whale.

Russell's Mr. Kitchen said risk transfers won't be the appropriate solution for all plan sponsors, with those seeking other ways to manage DB asset volatility now boosting allocations to alternative assets and private market exposures.

Virtual Travel ideas

We are in lockdown in my area, and we are practising physical distancing, but if you have an imagination virtual vacations are open to everyone with an internet connection. Whether you need an antidote to cabin fever or are pining for the flavours of a favourite destination, here are eight ways to travel without leaving home. 

1. Get an up-close view of the world

With Google Street View, you can visit famous sites and monuments while lounging in your pyjamas. Immerse yourself in history at Rome’s Colosseum, admire the view of the Kohala Coast in Hawaii or stroll through the opulent interiors at the Palace of Versailles in France. For more adventure, check out Google Maps' virtual treks. You can go from climbing to Everest Base Camp in Nepal to diving in the Galapagos Islands of Peru to searching for polar bears in Churchill, Manitoba — in just a matter of clicks.

2. Take a virtual museum tour

The world’s best galleries and museums are just a few clicks away with Google Arts & Culture, a platform that allows you to take digital tours of legendary places from the Guggenheim in New York City to the Louvre in Paris.  We also love the free online tours at the British Museum, The Louvre, The Smithsonian and The Vatican, Closer to home, The Virtual Museum of Canada bills itself as the largest digital source of stories and experiences shared by Canada’s museums and heritage organizations. You can even see iconic art pieces up close. The best part? It's all free. 

3. Cook meals from your favourite destinations

Travel and eating are one of life's greatest matches, so what better way to satisfy your wanderlust than by feasting on food from a place you're longing to return to or to see for the first time? Explore the globe from your kitchen by sourcing recipes from the corner of the world you're craving. You can also take online cooking classes such as Nonna Live, where you'll learn to make classics from an Italian grandma. Free lessons have cropped up during this downtime, including daily Delish.com cooking videos for parents and children, and Kitchen Quarantine, Instagram lessons from Michelin-starred chef Massimo Bottura.

4. Learn a new language — or research your mother tongue

Duolingo allows you to spend just a few minutes a day learning a foreign language, in a fun game style. It’s free and there’s even an app for kids. You could also have a go at a new hobby. Maybe it’s time for you to get started on your family tree: Ancestry has a free trial, giving you access to billions of family records. Who knows, your next trip could be to the land of your ancestors.

5. Explore UNESCO World Heritage Sites

It’s not quite the same as being there, but you can visit some of the world’s most celebrated heritage sites without leaving home. The UNESCO website has a list of 1,121 sites that are considered to have “outstanding universal value.” Many of these cultural sites, such as India's Taj Mahal, England's Stonehenge and Peru's Machu Picchu, have their own virtual tours that enable you to see detailed panoramic images while reading all about these fascinating places to appreciate why they are so important.

6. Visit a virtual zoo or aquarium

Hippos, monkeys and penguins can be viewed through webcams, virtual tours and “home safaris.” Visit Ripley's Aquarium of Canada in Toronto to keep an eye on the sharks. The San Diego Zoo is live-streaming a number of animals on its website, including koalas, pandas, giraffes and polar bears. You can also bring exotic animals like snow leopards into your living room with a selection of live video streams from Australian zoos. The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden is live-streaming a "home safari show" on its Facebook page each weekday at 3 p.m. ET. Each episode will feature a different animal and an accompanying educational kids activity that can be done from home.

7. Walk in the park — virtually

We may not be able to visit Canada's national and provincial parks in person, but you can still get back to nature (from a distance) with virtual tours and videos. Discover the beaches of Pacific Rim National Park and the magnificent peaks of Banff National Park via Google Earth, watch a live view of Algonquin Provincial Park and let a guide take you on a video tour of Gros Morne National Park. For even more park inspiration, we put together a roundup of our favourite videos and virtual park tours in Canada and the U.S.

My thanks to the folks at Travelzoo for the ideas

Accepting the inevitable

Ronnie Bennet at Time Goes By has some interesting posts, and she had one a while back that was titled, “Being 97” in which a 97-year-old philosopher looks at his own death in an 18-minute video created by his grandson. In the video clip he says “So, I just go on existing until it is time to say goodbye.” 

This was a dramatic revision of his thinking in the 1990s. In his 1996 book about death, Herbert Fingarette argued that fearing one’s own demise was irrational. When you die, he wrote, “there is nothing.” Why should we fear the absence of being when we won’t be there ourselves to suffer it?

Twenty years later, facing his own mortality, the philosopher realized that he’d been wrong. Death began to frighten him, and he couldn’t think himself out of it. Fingarette, who for 40 years taught philosophy at the University of California at Santa Barbara, had also written extensively on self-deception. Now, at 97, he wondered whether he’d been deceiving himself about the meaning of life and death.

“It haunts me, the idea of dying soon, whether there’s a good reason or not,” he says in his grandson’s short documentary Being 97. “I walk around often and ask myself, ‘What is the point of it all?’ There must be something I’m missing. I wish I knew.”

The day before he died in 2018, Fingarette uttered his final words. After spending many hours in silence with his eyes closed, His grandson said, his grandfather suddenly looked up and said, “Well, that’s clear enough!” A few hours later he said, “Why don’t we see if we can go up and check it out?”

“Of course, these cryptic messages are up to interpretation,” his grandson said, “but I’d like to believe that he might have seen at least a glimpse of something beyond death.”

In the film, Fingarette admits that there “isn’t any good answer” to the “foolish question” of understanding mortality. “The answer might be … the silent answer.”

Being 97 is a moving film that explores the reflection that happens as we age, and the struggle of accepting the inevitable. His grandson quietly observes the things that have come to define his grandfather’s existence: the stillness of time, the loss of ability, and the need to come to terms with asking for help. “It’s very difficult for people who have not reached a state of old age to understand the psychology of it, what is going on in a person,” Fingarette says.