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47 Years (or, Thoughts on Retirement)
“Who was the first man to look at a house full of objects and to immediately assess them only in terms of what he could trade them in for in the market likely to have been? Surely he can only have been a thief.”
– David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years
I have been on this planet for 32 years. That is the equivalent of two thirds the amount of time a working adult will spend laboring in their life. Sort of.
Not everyone lives a full life and not everyone needs to work to support themselves. Here in Canada, people can retire at any time, but most are compelled to a decision between the ages of 55 and 70. The vast majority spend ages 18 to 65 chasing the dream of freeing themselves from labor. A reprehensible 47 years. Not reprehensible because of what they are doing, choosing to do, or the fact that they are working. There is nothing inherently wrong with work, with occupying yourself in a profession to serve yourself or others, or with finding value in it. Reprehensible, then, because nearly all who work do so primarily to survive – to ensure basic needs, pay off debts, support others, or secure a modicum of leisure. Participate or suffer.
But I digress. This particular post is not about that aspect of how we set up our economy. Instead, it is a rumination on retirement. The end goal. Call it what you will.
I am 14 years into my 47 (or more likely, 52 or more). The sad truth is that retirement may be a fantasy for many individuals moving forwards. There are a variety of statistics that confirm how little Canadians are saving, or how many are aware of how little they are saving, or of those foregoing retirement because they must. Fewer and fewer are earning enough to afford the fast-rising costs of homes; the biggest chunks of paychecks ending up in the pockets of landlords small and large. Increasing inequality, unfettered inflation, reliance on resources dwindling our breathable air, and a financial system that incentivizes greed and excessive growth, not helping in the slightest.
Of course, with a social welfare system that hedges the worst outcomes, Canadians are fortunate. More fortunate than most in the world who have no vision of an old age free from labor, enjoyed on sunny beaches and shimmering shores. There is something to be said for selling your life and soul for a limited time rather than having it wrested from your grip as a child never to get it back.
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A Well-lit Darkness
The Sun’s rays break through the clouds above Murchison Falls National Park, Uganda.
(Not farmland. Not dark. Likely hiding many a firefly.)
Eight years ago, I co-authored a blog with a friend. It was our attempt to get into the habit of writing regularly. We were students in different hemispheres with an intermittent connection. We published a few posts before our enthusiasm for the exercise was overrun by the demands on our young lives. She was navigating a dual major in Science and Fine Arts, while I struggled through a dissertation on language education in East African settings.
The blog ran its course fairly quickly. I had no patience or time to frequently journal and both of us were short on inspiration. Writer’s block compounded by the mental exhaustion of finishing our respective degrees and preparing for the next chapter in our lives; a blind preparation as we hurtled towards uncertain careers.
The entry below is a slightly edited republishing of a reflection that was posted to the blog in the summer of 2016. The memory it alludes to now 11 orbits past. It is a fond meditation to revisit. My feeling on the noisiness of life has not changed, nor my proclivity to intimate a greater reverie than the one I had perhaps experienced in the moment. The epilogue also echoes – silence remains a luxury, submitting to sleep still a strain, the perennial pressures of existence ever-present.
As I type these words, the night has settled. Snow rests lazy and comfortable on the treetops. Most are sleeping inside their warm abodes. No sharp sounds puncture the nocturnal. Everything is still.
I invite you into the dark.
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Normative Winds
Questioning the collective dream is an act of exercising freedom. Examining the basis of how one should live, who with, and who for, is the kind of amateur iconoclasm that should be widely undertaken.
Perhaps it is – and perhaps everyone is content with coming to similar conclusions. Go to school, get a job, find a long-term partner, obtain a home, bring kids into the picture, fill your physical spaces and buoy your social ones with material things, travel occasionally, and aim for those unceasing milestones. Some of these things are necessary in a world constructed around increasing labor and capital to no end. Others are choices, many subsidized or imposed. By family, culture, governing bodies, and peers.
In this context, it can be exasperating to untie oneself from the common. To face persistent doubts about not being like-minded. To remotely question basic assumptions of what may underlie another’s comfort. As though one has come to naïve conclusions with little consideration rather than reflecting on what defines their own happiness.
Defensive, distractive, dismissive, disinformed retorts – the 4 walls of condescension put up around the ‘other’, in more circumstances than the above.
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Solitude, Interrupted
Walk with me for a moment.
This path leads onwards. It does not circle back. It may branch, like the trees adorning its tranquility. Whether its branches converge again is unknown. What we cannot do is turn back. We may want to, but forward is the only motion in this space. After all, we dare not cheat time.
Occasionally, we may happen across a mirrored surface. One that allows us to look around a corner, or offer a reflection on what has passed. Unfortunately, the surface will never be free of impurities. The grime will make it difficult to say with certainty what we are contemplating. Echoes, harmonious and discordant alike, may pierce the air. Visions from beyond this locale may briefly glide into view between the tangled network of green and brown; our perspective marred by the spore-driven haze.
But we shall stick to the earth marked out for us. A simple line through an overgrown reality. The path is soft and still, and we are its only inhabitants. At least for the time being.