It's Surreal Sliding Sideways

Apart from the deafening thump of bad economic news every hour of every day, the most resonate sense I have is that life has become a series of surreal days where nothing really happens. Sure, we all go to work (or at least some of us do), we go to events, we go to the gym, we pick up our kids from school, we all continue the daily regime and routine of that life we remember, but something doesn't feel right. Its like that dream you have where you're running towards something just out of focus in the distance, running and running, but you never quite get there, you wake up before seeing the destination in definitive reality. Maybe its like a hangover, a semi-permanent one, where that feeling of disorientation, slight depression and fragmented memories of the night before drag on for months. Maybe its the fact that nothing in the business world seems to be moving forward, sure people are talking about the future, even planning the future, but always in the context of a recently toxic past and the desperate reality of the present. There are whole weeks lost as every conversation you're in, or overhearing, is circling around the same topic discussed in the same shell-shocked way.

When this dream-like reality is over, I wonder how we will collectively and individually reflect on these lost days of 2008 and 2009. For many it will be like pages of a flip-calendar that didn't get bound leaving no trace or record, for others the blueish blur of watching a Bloomberg screen for too many hours. For me it will have been the most interesting of times, to observe in real-time a transformation of society around me. Other than my dear grandmother in Australia who at 85 has seen it all before, and Aria at 6 years old who remains focused on school, extra-curricular activities and negotiating for lollies; every other little facet of my life and the world I interact with, seems to have been turned upside down.

There are literally dozens of examples of economic theory playing out in the real world today, a radical one has been at the gym. Many businesses operate under the 80/20 rule: where 20% of your customers account from 80% of your sales. For a gym that means 20% of your members represent 80% of your usage or 'check-ins'. On a separate note, I'm also told that 30% of members who sign up for a 12 month contract, use the gym for the first month and then are never seen again! As you might expect, today gym membership sales are growing at a slower rate than in the heady years of 2005 through 2007, where a mere US$100 per month was chump change even if you only used it once each moon. The monthly cost of having a gym membership was compared to a round of after-work drinks at one of the many trendy bars that popped up around every major city in the world. What's most interesting is that 'check-in' rates at Hong Kong gyms are up 30% in the first three months of 2009. If that doesn't sound radical, try getting on to a running machine or bench press, or worse, getting a hot shower at any waking hour. The gyms are packed because the owners, knowing the 80/20 rule (see above) only design the gym capacity to meet a predictably poultry population of junkies that typically frequent the place. So now that people aren't going out for sit-down lunches or having after-work drinks as often, plus a rising population of out-of-work bankers are trying to work off their greed-bellies, the gyms are like toilets at half time at a rugby match.

Along with the 'budget' and 'mood' factors driving people out of bars and into the gym, I think there is a more subtle change taking place where people are becoming more human again - reflecting on what really matters in life. The thump of the news cycle is matched by a sense of quietness inside people's souls, like that silence in the eye of a tornado when all hell is breaking loose around you. This humane 're-balancing' of society is breaking down barriers that grew while society was single-mindedly pursing wealth and material gratification, where there was an expectation, not an aspiration, for the good life. This new reality is making communication between classes, cultures and genders easier with less hubris, less arrogance and hyped-up testosterone in the mix. Maybe a more tolerant society, focused less on individual progression and more on collective harmony, might be a silver-lining to otherwise surreal sideways slide.