You may be just an ulcer away from becoming CEO but that’s nothing compared to the pressure that awaits you as a redundant master of the universe put out to pasture, when the clock strikes the customary 65 years and out.
Hold on, though, not so soon.
Good news of the lateral variety is that the recommended “retirement age” in South Africa is now realistically 80. Admittedly, past 70 it will be a strictly work-from-home deal for the still-useful human relics of the office, as most modern employers prefer not to have a wheezing septuagenarian in situ, though they might be grateful (or not) for their skills if offered discreetly in a virtual manner.
Keep the company skeletons in the cupboard and the cadavers online.
Sad news for those on the wrong side of their glory years at the slave camp of their choosing is that the bosses can’t wait to see you off with a cheap watch and a tray of microwaved sausage rolls. Savour your working years, though, because you won’t get a moment’s rest once you leave them behind. Because in reality, the transition from work to retirement (at age 65 or 80) will likely test your stamina and fortitude in a way that 50 years of thankless labour never did.
In the modern way, not fulfilling one’s supposed potential and not squeezing every last drop of life out of our years on earth are considered cardinal sins. The preachy “One Life, Live It’’ mob dominates the zeitgeist, so any rare moment not invested in self-improvement is scorned. God forbid you should squander a half-hour in not pursuing your destiny with some bloody hobby.
So, the newly retired, freshly admitted to the chamber of the surplus to surplus-value proletarians, are especially vulnerable if they have time on their hands. They can be certain to be not exempted from the iron rule that not a millisecond be left to chance, as the finish line shapes up ahead.
Many of the activities you might be urged to do, so as not to “waste away”, will be familiar as things you last did when you were still in shorts. Like stamp-collecting, model-building, train sets, canary-keeping, all of them perfectly safe and stimulating for children and pensioners. No, online trading is decidedly for employed adults only, please!
These are strictly stay-at-home, preferably indoor, activities but a pensioner with money to spare (though not actuarially speaking) will have to answer to their critics for not taking expensive overseas trips to places they made the mistake of once mentioning they’d like to visit.
Implicit in this kind-meaning criticism is the unspoken threat that if you don’t go now, you may not be able to later. For the most part this relates to anxiety over the ability to contort oneself, vacuum-packed, into an economy-class contraption designed by a Temu packaging specialist. You become too hip to fly, after a certain age.
In between origami classes, mature yoga, birdwatching, tai chi and gin appreciation, the less set-upon veteran might set him- or herself the undeniably self-improving task of reading the books you might have but never did. The classics, bro!
For maximum self-edification (why else?) one would want to choose a standout doom tome of centuries past. Such soporific opuses as War and Peace and Crime and Punishment maybe, or the Old Testament, heavy going in spite of random begetting and smiting.
For hardcore self-improvers and bucket-listers, I have no qualms in suggesting the unreadable and unintelligible Ulysses, by that rum scribbler Irishman Jimmy Joyce. Written to confuse generations of English lit students, for stream-of-consciousness prowess its only contemporary rival is the teachings of defrocked envoy Ebrahim Rasool. Give a man enough scarf...
The literary equivalent of a three-month dental appointment, be assured that whatever unwanted autumn-era craziness is going on in your head, a few pages of Ulysses will have you revelling in your domestic normalcy, removed from the “too Irish” mind of Joyce. Oddly, it’s ideal for the feeble, because it's one book you don’t have to worry about losing your place. Push on and become one of the few of humankind to actually finish this cockroach-crusher. Savour the sense of superiority, reminding critics it’s never too late to build character.
But here’s the irony about the keep busy at all costs creed that informs senior occupational therapy discourse (if there is such a thing): inshallah there will come a time when we’re not able to do much at all except gaze into the middle distance from off our rockers, still trying to discern the point of Joyce’s antihero, Leopold Bloom, and wondering if we should have wasted time on activities when we could have been practising doing nothing at all.
And the last big existential question looms: can it ever be too late to learn to be idle?
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.