May you live in interesting times..., or not?

In the past few years I have started to use this phrase to help us through the current moment in our region. It’s a variation on the ‘better the problems of growth than of decline’ idea.

We could live in boring, uninteresting times and watch our region slowly atrophy as the workforce ages out, entrepreneurs and global businesses lose interest and governments focus more and more on keeping the elderly population comfortable.

Or we could live in interesting times as we attract thousands of people to our shores, signaling strongly to employers there will be talent to support workforce demand so go ahead and make your long term plans for growth in our region.

But the phrase ‘may you live in interesting times’ was bugging me. I couldn’t remember where I heard it. So, as we all do, I googled it. As written in Wikipedia:

"May you live in interesting times" is an English expression that is claimed to be a translation of a traditional Chinese curse. While seemingly a blessing, the expression is normally used ironically; life is better in "uninteresting times" of peace and tranquility than in "interesting" ones, which are usually times of trouble.

Bingo. This is why I was unsettled with the phrase. In this sense of the concept, I agree that uninteresting times is better. Let’s not have any big drama (war, pestilence, economic depression, runaway crime, etc.) that may make our era ‘interesting’. I am increasingly worried that Russia, China, et. al. are determined to bring about ‘interesting’ times in the coming years, I hope I am wrong.

But in the sense I use the phrase, I still like it. For me circa 2005, I felt like the frog in the pot of water that is slowly heating up and doesn’t realize it until it is too late.

In fact, at that time I developed a presentation called “our hill, our beans” and took it on the road - delivering it maybe a couple of dozen times back then. It was a clear call to action on population growth and on deliberately exploiting new economic opportunities in the region. I took this vision with me into the NB government in 2015.

Our hill, our beans was taken from the classic comedy, Naked Gun. It’s a riff on the original Humphrey Bogart line in Casablanca:

Frank Drebin: “It's a topsy-turvy world, and maybe the problems of two people don't amount to a hill of beans. But this is our hill. And these are our beans!”

This resonates. Globally no one gives a rip about Atlantic Canada. It is insignificant. Even in Ottawa, Atlantic Canada could be kept on life support through transfer payment without most people even noticing. Federal equalization to the entire region amounts to less than one percent of the federal budget and only a third of the amount given to a single other province, Quebec.

But we would notice.

We would bicker over which schools to close. Where to rationalize health care services. What municipal governments should merge in response to a stagnant tax base. We would face a growing tension between young and old with increasing demands on limited tax dollars. We would see further deindustrialization as our big exporters slowly divest away from the region. The age old urban/rural tension would only grow.

So, I recommend we try to live in interesting times and take all the challenges that come with it. Let’s build a multicultural society- urban and rural. Let’s jump on new economic opportunities. Let’s encourage entrepreneurship and innovation.

Because this is our hill and these are our beans.