The best news in yesterday’s papers was that almost 1.5 million people over 65 are in paid work. That’s one in nine of the total. I wish it were higher, but at least it is increasing. In 2000 the proportion was one in 20. Sure, the state pension age has gone up. But also, analysts say, increasing numbers are renouncing retirement because they value going to work for its own sake, not just because they need the money. They have clocked that there are non-financial benefits to clocking on.
I turn 60 next year. Over the past decade, every friend my age, and latterly some a good bit younger, have called time on their careers. That includes just about all of those who worked entirely or principally in the public sector: two soldiers; a police officer; numerous teachers; academics; doctors; civil servants; local government officials. One by one, they’ve all binned it. Some have gone straight back on freelance contracts. Some have carried on earning in other capacities. Some are content. Some are just starting to think they might not be.
This is nothing new. My parents, a teacher and a college lecturer, retired in their early fifties. They both lived another 25 years or so. My father-in-law, now 85, also a teacher, was unusual in continuing until he was 57. If a public sector employee stays in the job beyond 60, they are considered to be a borderline saint/eccentric.
The same thing is now happening with other friends working in the private sector. A hotelier, a cabbie, an HR manager, several businessmen and women, an engineer, City people, legal people, media people, all around their late fifties or early sixties, they’ve stopped, or are about to, or are planning to in the next couple of years.
These aren’t people who’ve slaved since they were 16 down a coalmine, on an assembly line or in a call centre. They haven’t been breathing asbestos like dockers, or freezing on sites like brickies, or being paid a pittance like cleaners or checkout assistants. They’ve done safe, secure, reasonably varied, reasonably well-paid, reasonably rewarding jobs, with decent holidays and benefits. Yet they ditch those jobs just the same.
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Why? I think in part they are fulfilling a cultural expectation — an outdated, unhealthy, ruinously expensive expectation — that retirement is just something you do when you hit a certain age. This idea is a hangover from when most of us did brutal physical jobs for 45 years, then, if we were lucky, had a few years’ well-earned rest before dropping dead. Now most jobs are undemanding and we live on average 10 years longer than when I was born, and 23 years longer than we did a century ago.
Friends ask about my retirement plans and are surprised when I say I haven’t got any. That’s partly because I haven’t got much of a pension. And mostly because I love my job. But it’s also because I suspect retirement is seriously overrated. If you’re healthy, and enjoying it, then hang in there, I say. Or if you’ve already gone, and you’re thinking maybe a life of leisure isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, dive back in. You’ll be most welcome, better off, probably less socially isolated and — who knew? — right at the cutting edge of an employment trend whose time has come.
Silent walking is not a fad
The big new craze on TikTok is … wait for it … going for a walk … without earphones! No music, no podcasts, no phone chats, no distractions. This radical departure is being spoken of as a “movement”, “an exercise fad”, “a wellness trend”, if you please. Devotees call it “silent walking”. One described the first couple of minutes as “mayhem. Your mind is racing, you have … anxiety … but [then] your brain gets into this flow state.” I’m not making this up.
Best not to mock. If youngsters are discovering the pleasures of not always piping noise into their ears, then great. There’s a lot to be said for hearing stuff — random snatches of conversation, birdsong, the growl of an oncoming car — which you have not chosen to listen to. Maybe next the young folk could try not riding their bikes on the pavement? They’d find that yields reward too, such as not being shouted at by irate pedestrians.
After that they could move on to, like, not using the word “like”, like, every other word? Sure, it’ll be stressful at first, but over time, it does wonders for the, like, clarity, precision and accuracy of what you, like, say?
Is there really joy in horror?
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Watching horror films can be good for you, says a neuropsychologist from Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh who was definitely not angling to get a mention in the press at Halloween. That’s because watching unspeakably scary scenes of dead people, murder, cannibalism and the like releases endorphins, which can raise your tolerance of pain. Other studies suggest cinematically induced fear burns calories and boosts the immune system.
To which I say: there are better ways of getting an endorphin hit, losing weight or generating white blood cells. And meanwhile, what about the nightmares? Not counting Shaun of the Dead, which was a comedy, I’ve seen just two proper horror films, The Exorcist and Dawn of the Dead, the 1978 version, about zombies in a shopping mall. I profoundly wish I’d never watched either one. Some things you can’t unsee.
