No rest for the wicked
The alarm goes off, interrupting dreams of scantily-clad sirens and sinful seductresses. Its incessant buzzing drags me away, away from their playful advances, from their loving arms, to a place I’d rather not go. Try as I may, I can’t ignore it. I awake, grumpy, sour-faced and scowling, nothing but a rapidly receding memory to commemorate my time with the sirens. Morning time. The worst time.
I may be relatively young and I may do something that I enjoy for a living, but I still detest mornings. I resent having to wake up at a certain time, having to go to a place, to interact with the other people forced to go there, and do a bit of work because someone said I should. But that’s life. It could be a lot worse, at times it has been a lot worse. I’ve experienced life on various sides of the coin; unemployment, menial work, low-paid, soul-destroying jobs, and then right back round, a mature student, a new career, unexpected prospects and propositions.
I still hate mornings though. Like all idealists I’d like to get up when I want, work when I want, for as long as I want, and get paid ridiculous sums of money for doing so. Then, when I’m good and ready, when I’ve saved enough to afford biannual trips to the Caribbean forever and a day, I’d like to retire. Except I wouldn’t like to fully retire, I’d like to work when the mood takes me, do a bit here and there if I was feeling a bit bored; enough to keep the oul’ grey matter from seizing up, but not so much that I have to deal with any more of that stress business.
If you’re reading this and you’re over the age of sixty you probably don’t know whether to laugh or cry, whether to chide me for my insolence or give me a great big reality check in the guise of a clip round the ear. Unfortunately, the joke’s on you. Or is it? In the latest attempt to utilise our aging population, Minister for Social Protection, Regina Doherty, has announced plans to launch an initiative aimed at getting people in their sixties back to work.
“There is a real challenge at the moment with old people sitting on our live register,” she said. “We need to find employment for those people because right now what we are doing is telling them that when they reach a certain age, and the cut off point for social welfare is 62, sure you are never going to get another job again, you go sit on this transition payment until you get your pension. I think that is not ambitious enough for people who are well able to work, who want to work.”
With no point of reference other than those around me, I turned to my family for their thoughts, to my aunts and uncles, people in their sixties, working since their teens, slaving, scrimping, saving. To a man, and woman, they can’t wait to retire, to chuck the alarm clock out the window and let someone else carry the load. That they mostly worked in the kind of jobs I referred to above (the soul-destroying, mind-numbing ones) certainly influences their outlook; fifty years of hard graft has taken its toll on their bodies, they’ve had enough and are actively looking forward to the break.
But what of those working indoors? The accountants, the secretaries, the IT consultants. Could they could not go for another few years? That’s the argument Regina Doherty will make, they’re the ones she envisages hobbling into the office, arthritis playing up, sciatica something chronic, as they near their seventieth birthday. They’re the people who, by virtue of having what many view as a ‘cushy number’, will be expected to work on, to watch their peers ride off into the sunset as they grind out another few years on the end of already lengthy career.
In addition to extending the career of those already in employment, this proposed scheme would target people over sixty who have previously lost their job and been unable to find employment since. As noble as this sounds it presents its own set of difficulties. A report last year which found that 63% of those aged between 50 and 64 were currently working, also discovered that two thirds of people in that age group have low literacy and numeracy skills. These are people who didn’t finish secondary school, who entered the job market without the level of education we take for granted today. And, for the most part, that didn’t really matter. They were able to bring their own set of skills to the role and carve out a career for themselves despite their truncated schooling.
However, as sad as it sounds, many of our older generation have found that those skills are no longer applicable in the modern workplace. Yes, there are certain talents which will never go out of fashion; man-management, diligence, and attention to detail. But this is the digital age, an era when even the most mundane occupations require some sort of technological acumen. Given the choice, employers will invariably opt for younger candidates, those who grew up with computers and for whom the latest technology presents few fears, rather than take a risk on a more qualified, more experienced fifty-something with little knowledge of smartphones and the touchscreen generation.
Therefore, I fail to see exactly where Deputy Doherty plans to put these people to work. For all Fine Gael’s bluster unemployment has not been completely eradicated in this country. Before we can hope to get those old people “sitting” on the live register back to work, we must first look to our younger generations, to those who, for want of a better phrase, still have their whole lives ahead of them. Yes, by all means let’s encourage those nearing retirement age to postpone their finish date, and yes, let’s endeavour to retrain those for whom the modern-day workplace is an intimidating, frightening prospect. But don’t force it upon people who don’t want it, don’t come down hard upon those who have propped up this country for aeons and just want to enjoy their golden years.
In truth, this scheme has come at least twenty years too early. While it’s an unavoidable fact that our population is aging, that people are living longer and birth rates are dwindling at an alarming rate, we’re simply not at the stage where we can effectively utilise those approaching their seventh decade, not yet anyway. Those currently in work have lived through much harder times than the feckless lot who will follow them, and the majority of those who aren’t have been left behind by a rapidly evolving economy. But when there’s figures to be fiddled, and live registers to be announced, none of that really matters.
A life full of memories
Death, the physical act of dying, of breathing my last, is not something I’m afraid of. The implications, however, terrify me. The thought of leaving this earth without having done all that I wanted to do, without fulfilling my ambitions, haunts me. More than that though, what really scares me, is dying alone. Imagine having no one to mourn you, no one to put flowers on your grave, no one to remember you when you’re gone? That, to me, is the ultimate fear, the one thing I hope to avoid.
But it happens every day. It happened to one of our own just last month. A Mr John Joseph O’Brien, aged 73, died in Manchester on August 9 and, after appeals to trace his family came to nought, one final plea was sent out on his behalf. It asked that members of Manchester’s Irish community attend Mr O’Brien’s funeral on Wednesday, September 27, as “no mourners are expected.”
Mercifully the request gained some traction on social media and, as a result, this lone Irishman will have a send-off to match with the best of them. None of those in attendance will be able to recall the things which made John the person he was, there’ll be no anecdotes, no retelling of madcap misdemeanours or ribald adventures, but there will at least be a service, a ceremony to honour his life.
It makes you think though, doesn’t it? At one point John was like any one of us; a young man in his prime surrounded by friends and family, a carefree child running amok in the school playground. Back then he would never have thought that when his time came there wouldn’t be single soul around to shed a tear at his passing. So, if you know someone like John, or even think you might do, someone who doesn’t appear to have anyone, for God’s sake keep an eye on them. And if the worst happens, shed that tear, shed bucketloads. It’s the least they deserve.
Footnote: Since this article went to print the family of Mr O’Brien have been located and have asked that his funeral be a private affair.
