Pulling the Plug

By Gabriella Coslovich

(The Age Newspaper) January 25, 2005

Mark Latham quit Federal politics altogether.

Despite what some people say, quitting is not just for losers. It can be the best thing you’ll ever do. Gabriella Coslovich reports.

“Better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof” – Ecclesiastes, chapter 7, verse 8.

‘We, the British, are not quitters,” Prime Minister Tony Blair declared recently, in a shrill defence of his nation’s entanglement in Iraq. Quick to correct the historical inaccuracy of Blair’s assertion was a letter writer to English newspaper The Guardian. The writer pointed out that the Brits had quit, again and again since World War II – from India, Palestine, the Suez canal, Cyprus, and every one of the nation’s African colonies.

Historical bloopers aside, one could quibble with Blair’s assumption that to quit is somehow shameful, a retrograde, spineless move to be avoided at all costs.

Zen masters would have a field day with Blair’s pronouncement, if they were at all censorious or prone to excesses of emotion. When did a timely retreat, a wise change of direction, an acceptance that one’s work was done, a desire to renounce, become so disreputable? In some people’s minds “quitting” is synonomous with “failing”. A “quitter” is a “loser”. But quitters are just as likely to be idealists, artistic mavericks, or ordinary people trying to live a more balanced, authentic life.

Quitting can take as much courage as stomping blithely on. Just ask Andrew Wilkie, who quit his post as one of Australia’s top security advisers with the Office of National Assessments in protest against the Howard Government’s decision to wage war on Iraq. On a more flippant note, feisty Australian expat Germaine Greer recently deserted the set of English Big Brother in a righteous huff. A conscientious objector – the reality TV program’s first – Greer defected in a blistering protest against the inanity of her fellow contestants and the insanity of their treatment.

When your drive and ambition reach the point that the only thing you see as important is work, so that you don’t pause sufficiently to refresh yourself and do other things, then it is becoming unhealthy PROFESSOR FELICITY ALLEN

At a time when we are encouraged to consume to our hearts’ discontent, to pursue fame as if the approval of the majority bequeathed self-esteem, to be “aspirational voters” and celebrity junkies of the highest order, excessive striving, however vacuous, has come next to godliness.

Sure, not all quitters are propelled by integrity: some, notably serial quitters, are in it for the attention. Britney Spears comes to mind. She’s pulled the plug on boyfriends and TV appearances and has regularly threatened to retire. Some quit because the whiff of scandal compels them: David Flint, Cheryl Kernot, Richard Butler, Peter Hollingworth. Some quit for love: King Edward VIII for Mrs Simpson. Some make a vocation of quitting: Dame Nellie Melba, John Farnham, the Seekers. Some explode artistic conventions, changing forever our definition of art, then drop out to play chess: Marcel Duchamp. Some achieve literary fame then want nothing more of the limelight, finding obscurity preferable to the vagaries of adulation: Catcher in the Rye author J. D. Salinger. Some are booted out by their constituents. Some know when it’s time to bow out gracefully, and some don’t.

[Germaine Greer abandoned the set of Britain’s Big Brother.

There’s been a lot of quitting of late: Australian Defence Force chief General Peter Cosgrove, former US secretary of state Colin Powell, NSW treasurer Michael Egan. Exeunt stage right, nobly. Not so dignified was the most talked about exit in Australia last week – that of federal Labor leader Mark Latham.

It’s a little ironic that Latham, who assiduously pursued Australia’s so-called “aspirational” voters, dangling before them the gilded ladder of opportunity, was rudely cut short in his own ascent.

Latham called it quits, standing down not only as Opposition leader, and thereby relinquishing his dream of becoming prime minister, but dropping out of politics entirely. He was putting health and family first, he said, but his parting words were bitter. Here was a man leaving prematurely, an angry and disillusioned man. Latham lashed out at the media for hounding him and his family and he would not reveal the extent of his illness, refusing the public the chance to understand. It was not a smooth retreat.

But Latham might yet find relief. He might find, in the words of George Michael, that he chose life, or, in the words on the T-shirt of a woman I saw walking along Elwood beach one recent balmy night: “They took his pride, and he found his soul.”

While the “aspirational” voters who spurned him continue to slave away at jobs they may or may not like, to fund maxed-out credit-cards and mortgages, Latham might find other things to aspire to.

Meaning, perhaps, fulfilment even, connection and peace. He might just rediscover the sweetness of life.

Just ask Jeff Kennett, former Victorian premier, who was savagely dumped by voters six years ago.

“There are lots of people who have lost their jobs, been sacked and then find it’s the best thing that has happened, and I put myself in that category,” he says. “I loved politics, I was very proud of what my government achieved, but change came, and with that change I am now a much more connected individual.

“I have my commercial work, I have my community work at Beyond Blue (an organisation that aims to educate people about depression), I have time for my family and friends in a way I didn’t have before, so I have a more balanced life, I have a more rounded life.”

Kennett says if you don’t enjoy what you are doing, then you should make a change. “If your yins and yangs are not in balance, make a change, life’s too short.”

It’s rather funny, touching even, to hear Kennett, the rampagingly reformist premier who irrevocably changed Victoria’s social, economic and industrial landscape, invoking the ebbs and flows of yins and yangs. Life, inevitably, moves on, the political battles become someone else’s, and former premiers can afford to be philosophical.

Joan Kirner, Victoria’s first woman premier, whose government was soundly defeated by Kennett in October 1992, is also leading a rich, rewarding life post-politics. Her decision to quit 11 years ago was easy, she says.

“I was exhausted and I didn’t think I had much more to offer … What I needed courage for was to believe that I was not finished as a person.”

Physically and emotionally worn out, Kirner fell in a heap for six months, then began to reorder her life. She continues to contribute in many ways, as co-convenor of Emily’s List, a lobby group pushing for increased female representation in Australian parliaments, as a board member of various organisations including the Australian Children’s Television Foundation and Malthouse Theatre, and as a patron of the Williamstown Literary Festival.

“I think it’s important to not be a shadow of your former self. While I am still involved in politics, it’s community politics. I’ve never seen politics as just the parliament. Some politicians go off and make money as consultants, but for a lot of politicians their real commitment is to making a difference.”

So when do you know it’s time to go?

“When your needs and your desires are no longer being met,” says Sharon Pearson, an exhaustingly upbeat life coach.

And those needs, precisely? “The six core needs that create quality of life are significance, connection, growth, contribution, certainty and variety.”

Pearson says executives often come to her when they’re on the verge of cracking, no longer coping with their long work hours and high pressure jobs.

“In coaching, my job is to challenge the way they think … I challenge what meaning they attach to things, and they get to a new level of awareness and it’s very much a case of letting go.

“Letting go of the badges, the power lunches, the six mobile phones, the need to be important, the need to be busy, the image of being needed, which is so many times what executives get caught up with and that makes them ineffective leaders.”

She says the only way to take our lives to the next level is to ask ourselves what we want, not what looks good.

“It’s worth asking ‘what do I want to experience, who do I want to connect with?’ Instead of asking ‘what’s going to look good and what’s everyone else going to say?’ Yet most people live their lives trying to conform, trying to fit in.”

For many people, particularly men, work defines who they are. But unchecked ambition can be harmful.

“When your drive and ambition reach the point that the only thing you see as important is work, so that you don’t pause sufficiently to refresh yourself and do other things, then it is becoming unhealthy,” says Monash University’s Felicity Allen, an associate professor in the department of psychology.

On a more positive note, Professor Allen says we shouldn’t be too hard on ourselves if we can’t quite muster the courage to opt for that much-desired sea change. She advises caution and research before making that leap of faith.

“You need to get good information about what it’s like on the other side of the fence. The other tip I would make is, don’t burn your bridges completely.”

Lisa Barton, 36, knows all about the art of procrastination. It took the loss of her beloved younger sister Amanda for Lisa to find the strength to make a long-desired change. Amanda, a promising young film-maker, died last month, aged 34, after being diagnosed with a melanoma in August.

Lisa, who has worked as an administrator and office manager for a small audio-visual firm for the past 18 years, took several months off work to care for her sister. “It occurred to me when I was caring for her that it was the first time in 10 years or more that when I woke up in the morning I looked forward to my day,” Lisa says.

“It just became clear to me I could not go back to my job. I just could not sit back at my desk and carry on as if this didn’t happen. It was time for change. Because Mandy was so enthusiastic about life, I thought it would be a slap in the face for me to go on living life without being satisfied.”

Barton has no fixed plans and is toying with several options. She’s interested in teaching, in groups that bring theatre to schools, in organisations that help refugees and immigrants. She admits it was scary going back to work last week, packing her belongings and saying goodbye to colleagues. It was a supportive and good workplace and it would have been so easy to fall back into line. But her decision was made.

“I feel in my gut it’s the right thing to do … life’s just too short.”

We’re out of here: CONSCIENTIOUS QUITTERS:

Andrew Wilkie, Germaine Greer, Hannie Rayson (Melbourne playwright, resigned from the board of the Victorian College of the Arts over the introduction of undergraduate fees), Rhonda Galbally (chief executive of Our Community, quit the Monash University council over the decision to raise HECS fees).

QUIT WHILE YOU’RE AHEAD:

David Flint, Cheryl Kernot, Peter Hollingworth, Richard Butler, Belinda Thorpe (the Big Brother inmate who became the first Australian contestant to crack and quit the reality television show of their own accord.)

MY LAST FAREWELL, HONEST:

Dame Nellie Melba (her farewell tour lasted four years), Kiss, the Seekers, John Farnham (Farnham fan Sam Christie, who forked out his hard-earned cash for what he thought would be the singer’s farewell tour only to find that Jack came back to tour with crooner Tom Jones, tried, unsuccessfully, to sue).

ATTENTION-SEEKING QUITTERS:

Britney Spears.

HIPPY QUIT:

Timothy Leary, early advocate of LSD experimentation, taught psychology at Harvard. Coined the phrase “Turn On, Tune In, and Drop Out” and formed the “League of Spiritual Discovery”, an LSD advocacy group.

ARTISTIC QUITTERS:

Marcel Duchamp, J.D. Salinger.