The collapse of Thomas Cook in September 2019 left hundreds of thousands of holiday makers stranded at their holiday destination and many thousands of employees without jobs. This is not counting the loss of investment by shareholders, small and large, debtors, and service suppliers such as hotel owners, all out of pocket.
It is easy to blame the changing habits of modern holiday makers who shop around on-line for best deals or choose to go with small operators who specialize in unique holiday experiences. But Thomas Cook had been around since 1841 and had the know-how, resources and opportunities to watch the market trends and change their business model in order to remain relevant for the 21st Century leisure travel.
The truth of the matter is that the executives and board of directors of the company failed in their duty of care and were looking out for their own interest ahead of all other stakeholders. As a last throw of the dice, they approached the British Government requesting £250 million bailout in order to survive. The government was stuck between two unpromising options: give the company the money to survive for a while without being certain of a brighter future; or refuse to help, knowing full well that the mess left behind will have to be cleared with funds from the taxpayer.
The government chose the second option. Whether or not it was the right decision is a question that is a mix of business, politics and social responsibility. However, what is not in dispute is corporate failure to take the right action at the right time in order to avoid such eventuality. They simply ran out of time and ideas and they were left with is the hope that salvage will come from somewhere out there.
In a perverse kind of way, salvage did come to the senior executives and board of directors, or it would seem so far. They all got away with it and don’t seem to be facing the consequences of their actions / inactions. As far as I know, none of them has been arrested, or sued for damages and they are free to carry on with their lives as law-abiding citizens.
I can understand at an individual level we resort to ‘hope’ when all else has been done and failed. As the saying goes: do your best and wait in hope. We all do it because we are not always in control of the entire process of achieving the right results.
Anyone with a medical problem, from a simple common cold to most complex procedures on vital organs such as open-heart surgery, removal of brain tumours has a simple choice: refuse to be treated by the medical profession or submit themselves to days, weeks, months of treatment ‘hoping’ that those who look after us are doing their best to help us recover.
As we step outside our front door, almost every action we take has a degree of reliance on others to help us accomplish our daily duties. Taking public transport, crossing the street, shopping at the supermarket, leaving our children with child minders or at school all have a degree of risk and hope that others will keep us safe from accidents, consuming healthy food, returning our children to us unharmed, etc.
The Oxford Dictionary defines hope as: A feeling of expectation and desire for a particular thing to happen. The 19thCentury poet and playwright Oscar Wilde described people’s failure in their first marriage and then marrying someone else as: ‘Triumph of hope over experience’.
The wisdom of Oscar Wilde’s 5-word quote is quite apparent. Life experience tells us: this is it, you have reached the end of the road. However, the human spirit is fuelled with hope and we continue trying. The Thomas Cook situation of knocking at the government’s doors to the very last minute begging for financial help when it was clear that their business has been damaged beyond salvage, is similar to our persistence to seek medical solutions when experience tells us to forget it, is indeed a triumph of hope over experience.
However, it is this very principle of inter-dependence on one another that got us today in the mess we inherited and will pass on to the next generations of severely damaged ecosystem and climate change. We all consumed, utilised and celebrated our sophisticated modernity of burning fossil fuel, cutting down forests, intensively farmed land and animals, and caused our own bodies damage by over-indulging in drinking alcohol, ingesting nicotine and over-eating suspect-quality foods. All the while, we were hoping the planet will look after itself and regenerate what we damaged over the years and decades.
How wrong we have been! I look at my children and grandchildren and feel hopeless for their long-term future. Not only did I perpetuate the damage to the ecosystem, I actually brought my children up to do the same, thus corrupting their future way of life. My only hope (there is that word again), that they do a better job bringing their children up than I did with them.
I often wonder if hope is a good or a bad thing. The best answer I could come up with is that it is a good thing but, I don’t like it. I would rather be in control than depend on other external forces be it medical professionals, family, friends or simply divine intervention to get me out of a tough situation. But of course, this is not always possible. In fact, it is hardly ever possible to be in sole control of everything we undertake. Inter-dependence on one another is the cornerstone of modern civilisation.
Finally, it is useful to have hope as it gives us a positive outlook in times of negative circumstances. However, I wouldn’t want to use hope as a soft pillow to help me sleep restfully with the expectation that what I hope for will somehow happen the following morning. Here is a quote by the English Philosopher Francis Bacon:
Hope is a good breakfast but, a bad supper.
