GIVE ME A BREAK:MY FRIEND, a former sales executive, has all the time in the world. We chat for half an hour in the morning, then another half an hour in the afternoon. In the background, I hear a baby rattling a toy and cooing, writes KATE HOLMQUIST
And all the while I think, my goodness, this is the sort of conversation I used to have with my working-from-home and stay-at-home female friends – but rarely with a guy. The men were so busy they weren’t inclined to spill anxiety about the meaning of existence – at least not sober in the middle of the day.
But the rules have changed for my friend, who has become what he never expected to be – a man on the dole. He saw it coming in the downturn, but even so, having to sign on has given him the shock of his life. He didn’t even know where the dole office was in his area. Now his power breakfasts have been replaced with whispered confidences about how to work the social-welfare system.
He’s so embarrassed, even ashamed, about getting job seeker’s benefit that he doesn’t want to admit to it at first. And when he does, he reminds me of all the taxes he paid when he was earning €80,000 a year plus bonuses. I agree – that’s what his taxes were for over the past 20 years.
Yet my friend still feels awkward about the reality that throughout his life he has achieved more and more and now there is less and less. His unemployed friends have confided how their job applications don’t even receive acknowledgement. There’s every reason to feel despair.
Gone is the flash car, the stunning house, the spontaneous city breaks and the fine restaurant meals. Instead of eating out he has learned to cook, and his war stories about his previously charmed career have been replaced with tales of the characters he meets in the queue at the social welfare office.
When he finally reaches the top of the queue, the civil servant tells my friend that he shouldn’t feel ashamed because he’s just one more face in a growing queue of middle-aged people signing on for the first time. My friend has realised that those claiming social-welfare benefit are no longer “people like them”. They are now “people like us”. People who once had time only to glance at the paper when it was delivered to the office now buy it out of their dwindling budgets because there’s a lot of reading in it and they now have time to engage with it. The newspaper gives them a connection to the world of the sort of people they used to be. Opinion formers. Trend setters. Captains of industry.
And yet that isn’t enough to keep a healthy self-image. So when you’re no longer drawing a salary and can’t afford to live the high life that defined you, who are you exactly? My friend is discovering more about who he is. He’s planning to start a business, if he can, and hasn’t lost his ambition. He has more time – a lot more time – to spend with his children and his wife, and they’re thinking that with both of them at home they might have more children.
Being on the dole is humiliating for him, and yet there’s an unexpected glimmer inside the crisis that has clouded his life. For the first time ever, he has time to think. Time is cheap now, compared to his past life when minutes were measured in euro. Yet his time is more valuable now, ironically. He has time to bring his children to hockey and rugby and soccer matches. He enjoys the conversations with other parents at the side of the pitch when he lets his guard down. He realises he’s not alone, and has a sense that this financial suffering shall pass and that, as long as he hangs in there, he will be able to fashion a new life.
He’s putting a brave face on a very bad situation, yet there’s a good chance that this experience will be the making of him. He’s young enough to start over, as long as he can keep his self-belief.
That’s the difference he sees between himself and some of the other characters in the dole queue. He has realised there are many people who never had a chance for the gold ring and never will.
On the carousel of life, my friend grasped victory for a few moments, just long enough to know that he is one of life’s winners. He will not allow himself to feel like a loser. Somehow, he will get himself out of this mess.
I suppose you could say that he has learned the meaning of gratitude. He is grateful for his education, for his contacts, for his beautiful wife and his beautiful rented house and his beautiful children – and even a chat on the phone.
And while it would be wrong to say he hasn’t suffered, he’s the last person in the world who would admit to it. He has it in perspective because his experience in the dole queue has made him appreciate just how lucky he is.
If you’d like to share your experience of being on the dole, please e-mail in confidence: kholmquist@irishtimes.com
