Over the Hill

I read the other day that a well experienced, articulate, experienced, well-travelled man had ended his life because he had basically done it all. He had nothing to look forward to and the future would at best be more of the same and at worst be unbearable. What a sad and unbelievable distressing situation to be in but there is more than a modicum of reality and truth in this assessment.

By Rajitha Ratwatte

fromoutsidethepearl@gmail.com

The population of the world is aging they say, certainly the number of people living healthy lives well past 60 years old is increasing. With this of course is the number of perfectly healthy people with active brains who are being either forced or manoeuvred into retirement. In past generations, particularly in countries like the Pearl, you did very well if you reached 60 without any major illness and a further decade was around the maximum you could hope to live for. Retirement was often looked forward to and even welcomed.

What happens now. 60 they say is the new 40. So, what do you do after you retire at 40? You have 20 years more of relatively active life to look forward to, how the heck are you going to survive? Forget about financially, let’s assume that either you have managed to make some provision or in the case of more affluent countries the state will pay you a pension or in a worst-case scenario the offspring that you have nurtured into healthy adulthood will look after you, what are you going to do with your time?

There are only so many books that can be read. Your life story can be written yes, and self-published but that should not take 20 years. You may be even cajoled into going into a retirement home but life with another bunch of old people can only stimulate you for a limited period. Besides, the usual rip off that happens in these institutions will certainly lead to frustration.

The experience that you have gained over decades of fighting this battle of life, everything you have learnt from the many losses and the few and far between victories are largely ignored by the new generation. They are too busy following Bill Gates and whatshisname Musk and even that aging hippie of the Virgin fame. They are conditioned by what they are taught in their schools today that no one loses. After all, even when they come last, they get cups and prizes, be it at sports activities or academically. They think that the minute percentage of the population that make up the aforementioned “heroes “of today, can be them. Everyone can be a Bill Gates, besides you don’t even need a university degree, after all Gates and Musk dropped out of prestigious universities and as for the Sir Richard Branson, I don’t think he even knew what a University was.

They have no time to listen and learn from old fogies. The fact they are never criticized in school also makes them unable to listen to any form of correction or any doubts cast of their grandiose schemes. Any cautionary advice is taken as negativity and discarded. Therefore, the active experienced mental faculties of the newly retired have no use among today’s generation. They simply listen to sermons from their millionaire gods and often at fast forward speeds. Have you tried to listen to this yammering? It usually emanates from their mobile devices and the reasons given are that they don’t have time to listen at the “normal speed” but that they can understand what is being said or the key words therein and work out the meaning! I fear they are on speed or some such substance that makes their brains work at 2x speed.

The geniuses of today don’t seem to realize that what is happening is that they are being suckered by a new aspect of the propagation of the rat race. In our time we were told that mortgages and hire purchase schemes were what we needed to have to succeed. All it did was entrench us further and further into the rat race. We ended up working for our masters for life and we owed our souls to the banks, owned by our masters!

They seem to have worked that out now, so other methods are needed to mislead new generations into servitude. Servitude that enables the rich to stay rich and have the general populace living under delusions of grandeur. Everyone thinks they can become billionaires if not in their late teens, certainly in their mid-twenties! They are being suckered by clever marketing initiated by these very people they idolise. These people need “worker bees” slaving at a lower level. Slaving away and spending all they earn on the goods and services that make the rich richer. Before the brilliant youth of today know where they are, if they survive the nervous breakdowns and the drug addictions that will accompany their delusional journeys they too will be 60 and have even less than our lot!

Legalization of Cannabis as proposed in Aotearoa will help with the delusions. Viruses like Covid-19 will alleviate some of the new retirees’ problems as they will kill us. Unfortunately, the initial beliefs that such viruses only affect old people do not seem to be true. However, if the American COWBOY is re-elected to office he may resort to the text book solution to the economic setbacks that we face. He may resort to war, possibly with China and an alliance formed with like-minded countries. If this conflict is fought on conventional ways us over 60’s may end up forming an even bigger percentage of the survivours, for they can’t really send us to war. That of course is assuming the human race survives!

I read the other day that a well experienced, articulate, experienced, well-travelled man had ended his life because he had basically done it all. He had nothing to look forward to and the future would at best be more of the same and at worst be unbearable. What a sad and unbelievable distressing situation to be in but there is more than a modicum of reality and truth in this assessment.

It is vital that we new retirees find something to do in the next 20 years or so that we have to look forward to. We don’t really need mental health counselling. We have survived, and, in most cases, we raised successful families. If we didn’t it may have been due to choice or circumstance. We may be over the hill as far as our rat race masters are concerned but this may be a blessing in disguise. Let’s find something to do with our lives that fulfil us, keep our active and healthy minds occupied and keep our planet safe. Let’s do it before we get targeted by the billionaire money making minions and sold another grandiose scheme!