THAT'S MEN:Who decided that doing nothing is bliss?
ONE LOVELY autumn evening last year I stood beside a swimming pool at a villa north of Alicante, looked out over the bay and asked myself: is this what retirement is like? If it is, I thought, I’m very glad I have to keep working until I fall into a hole in the ground or into dementia, whichever comes first.
I had got to that point of the holiday at which restlessness kicks in and the thought of getting back to the daily grind becomes highly attractive. The prospect of spending years, maybe a decade or more, like this seemed intolerable. Even drinking Spanish wine had become a chore.
That’s why I was quite unfazed by the announcement the other week that the retirement age would be going up to 68. I’ve long believed people should be entitled to work beyond 65 anyway and I have no desire whatsoever to spend my time watching Jeremy Kyle and Judge Judy on daytime TV or whatever else it is you’re supposed to do when you leave the rat race behind.
Perhaps my attitude comes from having grown up on a farm at a time when farmers saw holidays, bank holidays and retirement as aberrations of human nature which were not for them. I can only recall one farmer ever retiring and he was viewed with pity by other farmers as he dozed in the sun. Perhaps he was as happy as a clam but his peers just couldn’t see it that way.
Retirement at 65 is a very recent phenomenon and I was interested to see Muiris Houston pointing out in his column last week that Canadians work into their 70s though Italian public servants bail out by 60. When I worked on the staff of The Irish Timesmy colleague Sean O'Toole, who had started there when he was in nappies, told me about men who worked in the production area into their 70s because there was no pension at the time. It sounded like a bygone era but, well, 68 isn't all that far from 70 and we're heading in that direction.
Let me be fair. I have met people who, in retirement, have a great old time, travel here, there and everywhere and declare that they are so busy they don’t know where they got the time to do their jobs. They tend to have retired from bloody big jobs on bloody big pensions. I have also known ordinary mortals who shrink physically after retirement.
Somehow, at some point in our development, we seem to have got the idea that doing nothing is bliss. Perhaps this comes from an era in which hard physical work for little return was the norm.
Fair enough, but who wants to spend the day watching television or trailing after the wife as she does the shopping wishing you would feck off and leave her alone?
Not I, and that’s for sure.
LAST WEEK in reference to marriage break-up I suggested the Family Mediation Service or private mediation as the least damaging way to work out issues concerning access, maintenance and division of property. Yvonne McEvoy, of the South Dublin Collaborative Lawyers Group (southdublin collaborativelawyers.ie), writes to say: “There is another way of dealing with marriage/ partnership break-up and that is through collaborative family law. The objective of the collaborative method is to enable a couple to reach a solution in a non-adversarial way with the assistance of their lawyers, focusing on the interests of all parties and in particular any children.”
This appears to be similar to mediation but using lawyers rather than lay people. It strikes me that this approach would be especially useful if complicated property or financial issues needed to be sorted out. It would also be an approach that might be acceptable to an ex-partner/ spouse who is doubtful about the normal mediation process. In any event, I think the concept of lawyers providing a non-adversarial service is a great one. Visit acp.ie, the website of the Association of Collaborative Practitioners.
Padraig O'Morain (pomorain@ireland.com) is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His book, Light Mind – Mindfulness for Daily Living, is published by Veritas. His monthly mindfulness newsletter is available free by e-mail