Most of us can explain what we are working on. We are finishing a project, looking for customers, raising children, changing jobs or trying to get through the week with a little energy left over.
What we are working towards is a more awkward question.
A higher income? More freedom? Recognition? A secure home? Time to play music, see friends or do something for which nobody will ever send us an invoice — and we cannot send one to anyone either?
We may want all of these. The difficulty begins when an opportunity helps us achieve one while quietly making another less possible.
That is the territory I want to explore in this newsletter: the pursuit of a good life in a world that keeps changing the terms. It is also the territory of my novels about Henrik Bertelsen.
A life that refuses to follow the plan
When we meet Henrik in Tumult in Mecca, it is 1979. He is a Danish civil servant with an apparently promising future, an English wife, Sammy, a co-housing project and an adoption to prepare for. There is already plenty going on.
Then an unexpected business opportunity takes him to Saudi Arabia.
He does not leave home intending to become involved in history. He has a practical assignment, incomplete information and reasons for believing that things will probably work out. I suspect many international business adventures begin with some version of that combination.
In The Dollar Compass, his work takes him into the intersection of Western technology, Soviet ambitions and commercial survival. Meanwhile, the demands at home have not politely disappeared to accommodate the plot.
Henrik is fictional. His dilemmas, however, belong to a recognisable world: opportunities arrive at inconvenient times, organisations change direction, and the consequences of saying yes extend well beyond the person making the decision.
The novels give those dilemmas room to unfold. Here, I want to take individual questions out of the stories and open them up for discussion.
How much of success belongs to us?
Henrik’s outlook is shaped by growing up in Denmark. Education, public institutions and a social safety net form part of the foundation beneath his adventures. So do family, friends and the community he and Sammy help to build.
This matters because we often tell stories of success as though the successful person had supplied all the ingredients.
We praise courage, persistence and hard work. Fair enough. But who made education accessible? Who looked after the children? Who provided a second chance? And how much did it help to be born in a particular place at a fortunate time?
One theme running through the saga is my appreciation of the Nordic social model: the possibilities created when individual freedom is supported by shared institutions. Its tensions deserve attention too. How do we sustain a willingness to contribute? Which responsibilities can we share, and which remain our own?
I am particularly interested in whether security can encourage adventure. If failure is survivable, might more people dare to change direction, start something or challenge an established way of doing things?
That question connects public policy with decisions made at kitchen tables.
The price that does not appear in the offer
Money matters. Anyone facing a stack of unpaid bills has little use for a romantic lecture about its unimportance.
But once an opportunity offers more than we need for immediate security, the calculation becomes interesting. What exactly are we being paid to give up?
It might be evenings at home. It might be independence. It might be the freedom to say that a product is not ready, a promise is unrealistic or a profitable arrangement makes us uncomfortable.
Moral compromise can be remarkably undramatic at first. There is a deadline. Colleagues are depending on us. We agree to something we would have questioned a month earlier, and find a sensible explanation for doing so.
I find the explanation as interesting as the decision. People generally need to live with themselves afterwards. How do we manage that when our behaviour starts drifting away from our convictions?
These questions belong in conversations about work because organisations are made up of people who bring ambitions, loyalties, fears and household budgets into the meeting room.
History comes to work with us
The historical settings of the novels allow me to explore how large events enter ordinary lives. In Henrik’s world, a business assignment can bring religious authority, political conflict or strategic technology into very personal decisions.
From a distance, it is tempting to assume that we would have understood what was happening. The characters have no such advantage. They have the information available at the time, including rumours, persuasive colleagues and their own wishful thinking.
That gap between hindsight and experience interests me. Before judging a decision, I want to ask what the person could reasonably have known, what alternatives were available and what they stood to lose.
The same curiosity helps when we encounter another culture. We arrive carrying assumptions about trust, authority, time and fairness. Discovering that other people do things differently can teach us something about the assumptions we have mistaken for common sense.
There are other people in the calendar
Henrik’s wife, Sammy, has ambitions of her own. The children need attention. Henrik wants to play music as well as pursue business opportunities. There are only so many evenings in a week.
This is where grand ideas about fulfilment become practical. Who travels? Who stays home? Whose deadline takes priority? How long can an arrangement be temporary before it becomes the way the family lives?
I want to explore these negotiations with room for affection and humour. We can be fortunate, loved and reasonably competent, and still make an impressive mess of our diaries.
An invitation, roughly once a month
This newsletter is for readers curious about how work, money, politics, culture and relationships shape a life. You may recognise the dilemmas from business or public service, from raising a family, or simply from discovering that your plans had overlooked a few important details.
You do not need to have read the novels. Each edition will stand on its own, taking one theme as a starting point for reflection and conversation.
I plan to publish approximately once a month, in British English. At the top of every edition, you will find a link to an audio version, so you can listen instead of reading.
To begin, I would love to hear about an opportunity that changed your direction. Looking back, what did it give you — and what did it cost?
