If people do not have jobs they do not retire. Nobody really wants to live without any jobs if it can be helped. But the problem with jobs are, one cannot continue to do their jobs without stop, especially Government jobs are one has to retire one day or the other. The only question is when.
On a day of ones date of birth when one reaches the age of sixty one is retired. People around them become kind to them, say possible good things, and ultimately one is garlanded out to retirement. One is sent home with a few friends or pre-decided officials in a vehicle.
What ever minimum guarantee monies are kept with the employer is also given back so that the employee does not have to come to office again. The retired always waits for retirement to do the umpteen things one could not do when one is in service.
This is under the premise that now one is free to do his will. Here is where every one is badly mistaken.
It is a forty years routine one is going to miss the next day onwards! It is a freedom one did not enjoy one now feels he can enjoy! No Sir,no! It does not happen like that over night! The next day morning, one is lethargic as one does not have to go to office on time. And one goes for a walk. Any body knowing you will ask, 'enjoying?' So? The arrow is fully there, of course unintentionally. 'No Sir, just taking a walk'. After the words go out and when the friend is out of sight, this triggers the thoughts! Your steps do not move faster, as you are not in a hurry to be back. After a few more friends on the walk, you do not want to walk. You may feel like sitting near the temple or the Church if there is one and think for a while.
One thinks of the last minute thing forgotten on the day of your send off and goes to office. There again you are greeted and received and once you settle down friend who have been put in your post comes and tells you "Sir, how are you?" In an effort to say "Good or Fine, How are you" you try to scramble up to empty the chair for him and he says "No, sit, sit, sit!" That is a signal. He goes on, don't you want to see our Boss. You are sent to the Boss, who mostly asks about your welfare and if he is good, tells you if you would care to come to office on a contract for some more time.
You get the contract and start again and like it and find out early that there is something amiss! You also find out the freedom you were beginning to experience is suddenly pulled away and you get in to the office timing circle again. Again the put off things comes to your mind and you want to be free once again. An year passes by and you become restless to be free. You take leave of your Boss and other close friends to be free again.
In a weeks time, you are reminded that you have to cut down on your activities and ideas, now since that you are retired. You go to the medical dispensary nearby to have a check up for the pains and uneasy feelings you had earlier, but had never found time to check up! You wait at the parlour of the dispensary where you meet at retired officials who are with various ailments and had retired far far back from their respective jobs. You take kindly to them and enquire their welfare. They tell you very kindly of their better position compared to the other friends who have either been in much bad position or has passed away!! You tell them compassionately, "Oh...I see..Is it so, so sad.. A really, tough order he faced in life. May God above give him rest!!"
The physician dispose you off with the simple advice: Oh..you are fit as a fiddle. but mind you, keep doing your exercises, take a walk in the morning without fail. Do not consume alcohol to excess. I know, you do not smoke." Just continue with the same medicines you were taking so far!" Great indeed! But why did he say to take a walk without fail. Why to do exercise to be mentioned now? Do I not do my exercises? But does not matter. I am fit as a fiddle!
I walk home. Some of the people whom I found there were friends. Their problems were at times really worse than mine! And some of them had passed away!
When you reach home, your wife encourage you to do the biddings of the doctor. And adds her own advise of not to take much heavy work now that you are retired. Most of the time you are reminded of your retirement and if you tried to do something which involved any expenditure you are reminded that you are now retired and do not earn any salary and so has to cut down on expenses..! Since the doctor told you about the exercises and the continuation of your medicines, you do not have much expenses to incur as most of the things you will be forbidden to do so that you can have an uninterrupted care free and healthy life!! They are all talking about the body person. Nobody told you to go, see a movie, go play a bit, why not learn music. And ofcourse not writing.
The actuary business people had an eye on the body life of people. Their business works on the life of people and there is a kind of insurance called 'Life Insurance'. Here the life of a person is insured on the premise that a person may not die in a stipulated period and an addition is made to it saying "If death occurs this is the money which will be given to your next of kin or heirs" People fall into this great device as they are always wanting to leave something to their wards as a rope to carry on, if he himself can't give it!! It has played good for many and may play good for too many who are yet to come!
Actually, is there something called retirement? You are born, grew up, found that you can't get anything which needed cash, you search for it, find out you can't get any without working, you get work, either in private company, individual or for Government. Then you have the freedom of having your ware-withal and needs met and you acquire a family! Once you have a family your loving dears as father, mother and brothers and sisters take a back seat and to the front comes your spouse and children. You are engrossed in looking after them grooming them up and settling them in life and in the mean time devote your day time to the earning work wherever it is. It is from this work you are retiring as this work who so ever produces and gives it to you want it to be uninterrupted and hence want to refill the place with a younger worker, which you were once. Somebody would have retired whose place I would have taken. I had my chance. Now I have to move. No probslems to that!
At the point of retirement, the insurance companies also leave you. Have you ever seen an Insurance Agent walking up to an old man to request to take an Insurance Policy? Usually not. All those insurance wizards would have read their Bible! This Book of Life clearly says, how much is human life? seventy years, at the most seventy five!! Wow. It is some statement. Written from far far back in time. When we read the obituaries in the newspapers we see many people cutting the ice at a much much later age! But many others are not as lucky. They leave early, making everybody to sit down and think. Even though it does not seem to affect anybody, it sure, affected the Insurance people. They do not come near you when they hear you have RETIRED!!
But all is no lost. There is a silver lining to this thing called retirement too. This is the time to complete all the incomplete works which we very much wished to complete, whether our families agreed or not. When we complete the works, it is work we are completing. Any work well done will produce its earnings. Which means we can still earn and work after retirement and enjoy life and help others through that. Many people in great difficulty and extreme need will be happy if one helped them.
I will not offer any special medicine for retirement. I am only relating the general experience. The ones who had a dedicated life around their families alone are the most vulnerable. Because like the retirement from any system, the family system is also having a kind of slow but very very steady retirement in India, which was not the case earlier! In those days, the Appooppan and Ammooma culture were there and they used to passion the age old wisdom to the grand children for which parents encouraged to revere the grand parents. It went very well so far, but now,, with the advent of the new era in which the families have become more and more nuclear or tiny most of them city based, the space for the grandees have lessoned. Most people find the culture mixing inconvenient. The grandees are mostly having the village culture and want to be revered and looked after and allowed a lot of freedom in their general dealings and the new generation nuclear families do not find the time nor have the patience to deal with them.
The new generation want the old genre to learn new techniques for themselves and become wise in the newer modes of life by googling. But the old generation rebuff the googling and instead are googled out, many a time. Sadness of the situation is the new generation which is running around for making every thing neat and tidy is going to become grandees in a short while. And people are having to travel far in search of their desired kind of work. This will take away the near and dear and the generation ahead will have to look forward to find ways and means to make their twilight days fascinating by changing into new modes of life.
In such change, it is the nostalgia which is going to be really hurting. As the song writer and the singer rightly sang melodiously : peepul ka ped, ped ki chaav, nadiki kinara" etc. (that pipal tree, the three's shade, the river bank) which all one used to be around in childhood where one played and grew with friends and playmates, is going to be missed. Those who do not have nostalgia, may go without much difficulty. We see many people who do not have the forethought or satwik senses, but only consider material things as success and enjoyment may face less stress in their times. But the harsh truth of the difference in the generation gap is to affect them too.
The idle time value has given place to profit value. The question now being is asked is the value of having anybody around who may not directly contribute to ones family life and freedom. There is a saying I have heard in early life, which business men used to ask in many occasions: "Mujhe kya milega?" meaning what will I get. And I found to my dismay that they were very keen to put this question before every product and service "Mujhe kya milega?" This question of What will I get, slowly creep into their personal life and about their parents with the result the parents are many times discarded. Somehow, many people these days, take care of this matter and see that their personal affairs are arranged in such a way that their children or wards don't have to worry about them !
Many of the retired people entered into other kinds of activities which kept them healthy. One such is deep rooted prayer! It changes the life quality of people. Those who had been already praying it is easy to get into prayer and submit everything to God who confers his blessings in the form of good health, happy disposition and a compassionate outlook to other peoples miseries with a willingness to help.
The senior level officers thought to be the thinkers generally, led the way in these matters, by getting themselves reemployed and continuing to work with the people mostly whom they were used to so that they do not feel the change. Even though the present day mantra is 'change', the mind body structure do not take to change that kindly. The body mind always craves to be the olden, golden, childhood, earlier youth-hood and the manhood and so on all the time. Every time the change came it was rebuffed and was accepted slowly after a lot of consternation and murmuring. We are used to our old photos in the mind and when new photos come, the space for the old are attacked which the mind rebuffs.
When the humans in this earth would have to go to Mars or Kepler C, the same consternation, rebuffing and sadness and unhappiness will take place before some adventurists would turn up to go, to a so much light years after place, to not to return!! But then times will change, a time will come, like the character mentioned by Satyajit Ray where humans can disappear to reappear in Kepler C or Mars or any other Titan that is available and reappear back on the earth.
In that far of future times, it will be like our saying now to go to UK or USA or China. Times, times, and times. In the process many many generations would have come, worked, challenged, conquered and have ultimately gone like the wind!!
The key to unwind the old age blues are really given to or are with the children. Those families where the old people live, if they are with the new kids on the block, usually their children's children, that takes the form of a company which contributes to the effective warding of early aging. The bridge that they make with the earlier generation is always remarkable as we see in homes with small children and old grannies and grandpas. They interact well with each other.
Many of the elderly keep doing some effective and fruitful work to keep off aging. But all the same, blood ages with lack of interaction and exercise! Young blood! Middle aged blood! Old Blood! Then very old blood! Very old blood is a crawling blood just like the too young little blood! And those who have very old blood will be acting like little children if they are not mentally active keeping up synergy and exercise levels.
We hear stories of elderly people, old people and long retired people saying that this one or that one is down with one side gone, two side gone etc. many a time starting with a fall, mostly a fall in the bath room. Actually people when they become inactive at home they slowly discard their safety norms and for a while it works, till that moment of danger strikes and one has a fall here or there and the story of their long crawl (or the short crawl?) for life starts. This story is not much different for any one. Everywhere it is the same. If the old are careful to keep up their exercise and synergy levels they can avoid the early ultimate and have a long and useful, fruitful and interesting life until they reach the pass over which they can pre-warn their near and dear, of course, if they are lucky!
(will continue..)
On a day of ones date of birth when one reaches the age of sixty one is retired. People around them become kind to them, say possible good things, and ultimately one is garlanded out to retirement. One is sent home with a few friends or pre-decided officials in a vehicle.
What ever minimum guarantee monies are kept with the employer is also given back so that the employee does not have to come to office again. The retired always waits for retirement to do the umpteen things one could not do when one is in service.
This is under the premise that now one is free to do his will. Here is where every one is badly mistaken.
It is a forty years routine one is going to miss the next day onwards! It is a freedom one did not enjoy one now feels he can enjoy! No Sir,no! It does not happen like that over night! The next day morning, one is lethargic as one does not have to go to office on time. And one goes for a walk. Any body knowing you will ask, 'enjoying?' So? The arrow is fully there, of course unintentionally. 'No Sir, just taking a walk'. After the words go out and when the friend is out of sight, this triggers the thoughts! Your steps do not move faster, as you are not in a hurry to be back. After a few more friends on the walk, you do not want to walk. You may feel like sitting near the temple or the Church if there is one and think for a while.
One thinks of the last minute thing forgotten on the day of your send off and goes to office. There again you are greeted and received and once you settle down friend who have been put in your post comes and tells you "Sir, how are you?" In an effort to say "Good or Fine, How are you" you try to scramble up to empty the chair for him and he says "No, sit, sit, sit!" That is a signal. He goes on, don't you want to see our Boss. You are sent to the Boss, who mostly asks about your welfare and if he is good, tells you if you would care to come to office on a contract for some more time.
You get the contract and start again and like it and find out early that there is something amiss! You also find out the freedom you were beginning to experience is suddenly pulled away and you get in to the office timing circle again. Again the put off things comes to your mind and you want to be free once again. An year passes by and you become restless to be free. You take leave of your Boss and other close friends to be free again.
In a weeks time, you are reminded that you have to cut down on your activities and ideas, now since that you are retired. You go to the medical dispensary nearby to have a check up for the pains and uneasy feelings you had earlier, but had never found time to check up! You wait at the parlour of the dispensary where you meet at retired officials who are with various ailments and had retired far far back from their respective jobs. You take kindly to them and enquire their welfare. They tell you very kindly of their better position compared to the other friends who have either been in much bad position or has passed away!! You tell them compassionately, "Oh...I see..Is it so, so sad.. A really, tough order he faced in life. May God above give him rest!!"
The physician dispose you off with the simple advice: Oh..you are fit as a fiddle. but mind you, keep doing your exercises, take a walk in the morning without fail. Do not consume alcohol to excess. I know, you do not smoke." Just continue with the same medicines you were taking so far!" Great indeed! But why did he say to take a walk without fail. Why to do exercise to be mentioned now? Do I not do my exercises? But does not matter. I am fit as a fiddle!
I walk home. Some of the people whom I found there were friends. Their problems were at times really worse than mine! And some of them had passed away!
When you reach home, your wife encourage you to do the biddings of the doctor. And adds her own advise of not to take much heavy work now that you are retired. Most of the time you are reminded of your retirement and if you tried to do something which involved any expenditure you are reminded that you are now retired and do not earn any salary and so has to cut down on expenses..! Since the doctor told you about the exercises and the continuation of your medicines, you do not have much expenses to incur as most of the things you will be forbidden to do so that you can have an uninterrupted care free and healthy life!! They are all talking about the body person. Nobody told you to go, see a movie, go play a bit, why not learn music. And ofcourse not writing.
The actuary business people had an eye on the body life of people. Their business works on the life of people and there is a kind of insurance called 'Life Insurance'. Here the life of a person is insured on the premise that a person may not die in a stipulated period and an addition is made to it saying "If death occurs this is the money which will be given to your next of kin or heirs" People fall into this great device as they are always wanting to leave something to their wards as a rope to carry on, if he himself can't give it!! It has played good for many and may play good for too many who are yet to come!
Actually, is there something called retirement? You are born, grew up, found that you can't get anything which needed cash, you search for it, find out you can't get any without working, you get work, either in private company, individual or for Government. Then you have the freedom of having your ware-withal and needs met and you acquire a family! Once you have a family your loving dears as father, mother and brothers and sisters take a back seat and to the front comes your spouse and children. You are engrossed in looking after them grooming them up and settling them in life and in the mean time devote your day time to the earning work wherever it is. It is from this work you are retiring as this work who so ever produces and gives it to you want it to be uninterrupted and hence want to refill the place with a younger worker, which you were once. Somebody would have retired whose place I would have taken. I had my chance. Now I have to move. No probslems to that!
At the point of retirement, the insurance companies also leave you. Have you ever seen an Insurance Agent walking up to an old man to request to take an Insurance Policy? Usually not. All those insurance wizards would have read their Bible! This Book of Life clearly says, how much is human life? seventy years, at the most seventy five!! Wow. It is some statement. Written from far far back in time. When we read the obituaries in the newspapers we see many people cutting the ice at a much much later age! But many others are not as lucky. They leave early, making everybody to sit down and think. Even though it does not seem to affect anybody, it sure, affected the Insurance people. They do not come near you when they hear you have RETIRED!!
But all is no lost. There is a silver lining to this thing called retirement too. This is the time to complete all the incomplete works which we very much wished to complete, whether our families agreed or not. When we complete the works, it is work we are completing. Any work well done will produce its earnings. Which means we can still earn and work after retirement and enjoy life and help others through that. Many people in great difficulty and extreme need will be happy if one helped them.
I will not offer any special medicine for retirement. I am only relating the general experience. The ones who had a dedicated life around their families alone are the most vulnerable. Because like the retirement from any system, the family system is also having a kind of slow but very very steady retirement in India, which was not the case earlier! In those days, the Appooppan and Ammooma culture were there and they used to passion the age old wisdom to the grand children for which parents encouraged to revere the grand parents. It went very well so far, but now,, with the advent of the new era in which the families have become more and more nuclear or tiny most of them city based, the space for the grandees have lessoned. Most people find the culture mixing inconvenient. The grandees are mostly having the village culture and want to be revered and looked after and allowed a lot of freedom in their general dealings and the new generation nuclear families do not find the time nor have the patience to deal with them.
The new generation want the old genre to learn new techniques for themselves and become wise in the newer modes of life by googling. But the old generation rebuff the googling and instead are googled out, many a time. Sadness of the situation is the new generation which is running around for making every thing neat and tidy is going to become grandees in a short while. And people are having to travel far in search of their desired kind of work. This will take away the near and dear and the generation ahead will have to look forward to find ways and means to make their twilight days fascinating by changing into new modes of life.
In such change, it is the nostalgia which is going to be really hurting. As the song writer and the singer rightly sang melodiously : peepul ka ped, ped ki chaav, nadiki kinara" etc. (that pipal tree, the three's shade, the river bank) which all one used to be around in childhood where one played and grew with friends and playmates, is going to be missed. Those who do not have nostalgia, may go without much difficulty. We see many people who do not have the forethought or satwik senses, but only consider material things as success and enjoyment may face less stress in their times. But the harsh truth of the difference in the generation gap is to affect them too.
The idle time value has given place to profit value. The question now being is asked is the value of having anybody around who may not directly contribute to ones family life and freedom. There is a saying I have heard in early life, which business men used to ask in many occasions: "Mujhe kya milega?" meaning what will I get. And I found to my dismay that they were very keen to put this question before every product and service "Mujhe kya milega?" This question of What will I get, slowly creep into their personal life and about their parents with the result the parents are many times discarded. Somehow, many people these days, take care of this matter and see that their personal affairs are arranged in such a way that their children or wards don't have to worry about them !
Many of the retired people entered into other kinds of activities which kept them healthy. One such is deep rooted prayer! It changes the life quality of people. Those who had been already praying it is easy to get into prayer and submit everything to God who confers his blessings in the form of good health, happy disposition and a compassionate outlook to other peoples miseries with a willingness to help.
The senior level officers thought to be the thinkers generally, led the way in these matters, by getting themselves reemployed and continuing to work with the people mostly whom they were used to so that they do not feel the change. Even though the present day mantra is 'change', the mind body structure do not take to change that kindly. The body mind always craves to be the olden, golden, childhood, earlier youth-hood and the manhood and so on all the time. Every time the change came it was rebuffed and was accepted slowly after a lot of consternation and murmuring. We are used to our old photos in the mind and when new photos come, the space for the old are attacked which the mind rebuffs.
When the humans in this earth would have to go to Mars or Kepler C, the same consternation, rebuffing and sadness and unhappiness will take place before some adventurists would turn up to go, to a so much light years after place, to not to return!! But then times will change, a time will come, like the character mentioned by Satyajit Ray where humans can disappear to reappear in Kepler C or Mars or any other Titan that is available and reappear back on the earth.
In that far of future times, it will be like our saying now to go to UK or USA or China. Times, times, and times. In the process many many generations would have come, worked, challenged, conquered and have ultimately gone like the wind!!
The key to unwind the old age blues are really given to or are with the children. Those families where the old people live, if they are with the new kids on the block, usually their children's children, that takes the form of a company which contributes to the effective warding of early aging. The bridge that they make with the earlier generation is always remarkable as we see in homes with small children and old grannies and grandpas. They interact well with each other.
Many of the elderly keep doing some effective and fruitful work to keep off aging. But all the same, blood ages with lack of interaction and exercise! Young blood! Middle aged blood! Old Blood! Then very old blood! Very old blood is a crawling blood just like the too young little blood! And those who have very old blood will be acting like little children if they are not mentally active keeping up synergy and exercise levels.
We hear stories of elderly people, old people and long retired people saying that this one or that one is down with one side gone, two side gone etc. many a time starting with a fall, mostly a fall in the bath room. Actually people when they become inactive at home they slowly discard their safety norms and for a while it works, till that moment of danger strikes and one has a fall here or there and the story of their long crawl (or the short crawl?) for life starts. This story is not much different for any one. Everywhere it is the same. If the old are careful to keep up their exercise and synergy levels they can avoid the early ultimate and have a long and useful, fruitful and interesting life until they reach the pass over which they can pre-warn their near and dear, of course, if they are lucky!
(will continue..)
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