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| Work - Shifting realities or shift-work redefined? |
The way we think about work and retirement is changing significantly. Our efforts to define the shape of our future might seem idealistic, naïve even. Maybe we are simply making a grab for a second youth. Perhaps, perhaps not: history will be the judge.
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| Productive Ageing - National Seniors Foundation | |
In May 2005, I was contracted as a writer and advisor to the National Seniors Foundation's Centre for Productive Ageing.
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 | National Seniors Foundation - Australia's largest organisation representing those 50 years and over, is working towards an improved understanding of productive ageing. | |
The following is extracted from a longer essay which I wrote as a way of clarifying my own thoughts on my place in society as I grow older:
We are, by now, familiar with the “sea change ” trend, in which people make dramatic changes to their lives by swapping the city, traffic and oppressive work routines for the beach or bush, ambling pace and a more creative work-life pattern.
Magazines and newspapers routinely feature stories about couples and families who have apparently succeeded in making the transition from city realities to bucolic idylls, making them unwitting disciples of Thomas Hardy in pitting city evils against rural innocence. In these articles, we read about their slower pace of life and their greater sense of connection with their neighbours and local community. Successful sea change advocates shine with the excitement of new-found hobbies which tap into their creative potential. Often, the sun is also shining in the accompanying photos. Whether it’s called a sea-change, or more prosaically, “downshifting”, it really does all sound magical. Who wouldn’t want to share in this?
People complain, with good reason, about the stress of work demands. Parents stagger under the stress of weekend driving duties, ferrying their sons and daughters to and from sporting, music and party commitments. (Whatever happened to the drawn-out days of our childhood weekends?) Too many of us stress out about “fitting in” everything: our work, our families, our friends, our hobbies and interests and fitness and meetings of the local branch and . . . and so the list goes on. The need to keep up, to stay ahead of the game, to plot and plan the course of every aspect of our days and nights threads its way through our lives. No wonder we are wilting. No wonder some amongst us are making a run for it, or at least dream of a new world in which slow, slower and slowest are the speeds of excellence.
With the recent publication of the ABS Year Book 2005, I’ve been reminded that I’m a member of that generation of women aged from 45 to 54 years who entered the workforce during the women’s liberation movement and stayed for the duration. We are also the first generation of women who reconnected with the workforce after having children. The accretion of statistics in the absence of stories can give the impression that inexorable – and possibly mindless - forces are at play. But each statistic represents an individual story laden with a mixture of reflection and luck - good and bad. The compounding effects of those individual stories explain a new trend now emerging; it looks like “the sea-change” trend at face value, but differs from it in subtle but profound ways. We’ve experienced or witnessed several waves of changes which have been branded accordingly. I wonder, now, if the next brand name will be “the passport generation”.
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The sea change trend holds out the promise of the single magic bullet solution to happiness. It has a seductive appeal; the sheer drama of it is appealing. We get to be the central stars of a genuine “reality show”, unleashing our hitherto-hidden radical spirit and showing off our courage to our friends and families. However, we need to be alert: promises of quick healing only lead us into more illusions – and the inevitable disillusionments - because “real” solutions tend to come the long way ie through the steady practice of a disciplined mind and heart.
We need to use our ingenuity and insights into the first half of our adulthood to passport our way from one set of work-life/expectations to a new and as yet untried way of work-life/expectations. That is, we need to passport our skills and lessons from the old, linear routine of work-is-life, which we believed to be a necessary condition of being responsible adults, to a new pattern of life-as-a-work-in-progress.
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| What it means for public policy | |
We have not only absorbed the fact of our increasing life-span, but we have also absorbed the fact of a dwindling supply of pension-fund-generators to support us all: the size of the ageing population far exceeds the size of the young, money-earning working population. Rather than shrug our shoulders with ennui at these facts, we are actually facing up to them. Perhaps a collective latent guilt lies within us.
Our preparedness, begrudging or otherwise, to pull our weight in the work force beyond the traditional retirement age bracket of 55– 65 years means that current policy expectations about the social security burden can be revised. Certainly, very few people under the age of fifty years of age seriously believes that he or she will be drawing a social security pension to support them in their retirement.
If more people are extending their work lives, this is good news for government. Aged care and retirement policies in social security, health, housing and superannuation will be able to take into account people’s changing expectations about the role of government in their lives.
The government’s gradual withdrawal of income support for older people – except for the desperate –does not necessarily mean that the government can or will completely vacate the policy arena for older people. As more people live alone, either by choice or by the force of life circumstances, loneliness is likely to become a major public policy issue. Whilst loneliness is an inevitable part of the human condition, government may be forced to reckon with it when the affects of chronic loneliness show up in physical and mental health indicators, and quality of community wellbeing indicators. Understanding the implications of loneliness has repercussions for housing design, urban streetscapes and communal spaces – including telecommunication space as well as public and private spaces – where people can congregate, socialize, share their stories and so share their lives.
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| Passport Visa: In Transit | |
So, beads of recognition are stirring. We know that our previously cavalier approach to our future has implications for not only us personally, but also for the generation of young people’s following us. We are, it seems, getting a grip on things.
And as we passport our way into the second half of our adult lives, bringing along our skills and our curiosity to explore life anew, perhaps we will discover some magic after all.
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