Toronto, June 28, 2026
M&A
To an investment banker or corporate lawyer, M&A means mergers and acquisitions, one deal after another. For other people, M&A means maintenance and administration, the boring, continuous, and intensely personal experience of trying to stay alive and upright for as long as possible.
When you’re old, personal M&A seems to take most of the available time. Somebody once asked Sandra Shamas, the Canadian actress and director who retired and went to live on a farm, what she did all day. “I don’t know,” she said, “but it takes me all day to do it and I’m filthy at the end.”
Stewart Brand, in his new book Maintenance of Everything, defines “maintenance” as “the whole grand process of keeping a thing going.” He writes about yachts competing in a non-stop solo round-the-world race (“a contest of maintenance styles”), the lessons of motorcycle maintenance (“some of history’s worst disasters came from mismanaged maintenance”), and the Model T Ford (a vehicle “so uncomplicated that anyone could learn to do the maintenance it required”). Brand is particularly concerned with the “chaos of rust.” He writes: “Defeating rust is an endless drudgery of oiling, greasing, brushing, scraping, cleansing, swabbing, painting, repainting, re-repainting, and finally discarding.”
Curiously, Brand ignores the biggest and most complicated maintenance job of all, maintenance of the human body. Many years ago, when I used to ask my aged father how he was doing, he would give a one word reply: “maintaining.” I found this response elusive and annoying. What did he mean? Only recently did I realize how appropriate and perceptive his reply was. My dad got it. When you’re old, if you’re smart, that’s what you’re doing, as best you can—maintaining.
Brand tells us that the universal advice from professional maintainers is “Read the fucking manual!” But there is no definitive and comprehensive manual for the human body. Brand describes the Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy (3,530 pages long) as “the authoritative text for every known ailment of the human body.” But the Merck Manual, intended for health professionals (although there is a consumer version), is not really about maintenance, and hasn’t got a single word in it about rust.
Where do we turn for human body maintenance information and advice? Who will inform us about the “endless drudgery of oiling, greasing, brushing, scraping, cleansing, swabbing, painting, repainting, re-repainting, and finally discarding?”
The medical profession is still the main source of reliable help in maintaining the body. But the role of doctors and other scientists continues to be eroded by Internet offerings. Chat GPT says, “YouTube likely contains hundreds of millions to over a billion videos related to medical issues...” Endless websites and AI applications offer general advice to the uninformed. Even the doctors themselves have been seduced by artificial intelligence. The New York Times reports that doctors in the U.S. are increasingly using an app called OpenEvidence to find answers to clinical questions for diagnosis and treatment: “Talk to a doctor and chances are he or she uses the app to ask specific medical questions or bounce ideas off it in a diagnostic dialogue.” The maintenance manual for the human body is now in the ether and is available to just about everybody (for the moment, access to OpenEvidence is restricted to doctors). Maintenance of the human body is becoming a DIY project.
Maintenance takes a lot of time (“it takes me all day to do it”). That’s where administration comes in. All those doctor appointments to schedule. All those prescriptions to fill. All that rehab to arrange. All those insurance claims to make. All that trolling the medical web. This, on top of paying the hydro bill every month. There’s no M without A.
And, as Sandra Schamas said, you’re filthy at the end.
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A few reader comments on Endgame #134 (“Do not drop it, or you are lost”)
David Wolinsky writes: “Because of a recently fractured tail bone, I’m incapable of sleeping more than an hour at a time so that by morning I’m what can only be described as loopy. On reading today’s Endgame my thoughts were that in giving my kids Goodnight Moon rather than The Enchanted Ship I was probably a lousy parent, if a Minotaur ate young men and women, what did a Bigotaur eat, and the dominant thread in my life was doing stupid things like fracturing my tail bone. I probably shouldn’t be operating power tools for the next while.”
From Naomi Duguid: “Theseus knew he was laying the thread, but in general we don’t think of it until the time comes, later in life, to reflect back, as you do here, so appreciatively.”
Sher Singh: “Grand-parenthood is the reward for a parenting well done... It is also the thread that brings you home.”
And an interesting comment on Endgame #132 (“A diagnosis”) from the artist Lynn Rotin: “I keep thinking about you and Parkinson’s. As you might know, I was misdiagnosed and lived with the condition for ten months. The mind/body connection is so strong and I had many good reasons for believing the diagnosis (chemicals in my careers as a graphic designer in the cut and paste days and as an oil painter; plus, my Dad had it). I became hyper-vigilant and every new twitch or ache and pain was attributed to PD... The symptoms were caused by a medication I had been taking for over 20 years and not by Parkinson’s... I am off the medication now and the symptoms have disappeared... PD is nasty but it’s a diagnosis and not the definition of who you are.”
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A plug (C’mon, people!)
Available from Amazon in most countries, and from some independent bookstores in Canada (coast-to-coast) including Ben McNally Books and Book City in Toronto, Munro’s Books in Victoria, B.C., and Salt-Water Ballad Books in Port Medway, N.S.
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The thing about maintaining yourself in your later years is that you have time for those parts of it that are pleasurable and spirit lifting: gardening, walking, singing, learning. These are not only good for your body but also your soul.
I asked the Sandra Schamas question of a colleague of mine who retired before I did. His answer: I get up in the morning with nothing to do, and when I go to bed at night, I've done about half of it.
The classic comment on the Slayton version of M&A was 'if I had known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.'
And the cynic's take on the next generation: grandchildren are your reward for not having killed your children.