by Gordon Kinghorn
(UK)
There thrives a present-day phenomenon which now traditionally and inexplicably exists when people invariably come face-to-face with the funeral rites of their respective working lives; it is clearly a noisy ritual, replete with unbridled and voluminous passion, consisting of either brazen delirium – or that of tortured, vocalised and agonised screeches of nonplussed abandonment, fired and fuelled by a sense of Herculean personal loss.
As for me, and in-keeping with my Scottish roots, I possessed nothing less than a robust, Caledonian inner entreaty to exhibit a liberty-laden rendition of the ‘Highland Fling’, by merrily dancing in kilted attire on the grave of all that once was, thus; the gruelling ‘norm’ of one’s once exhausting, contemporary workplace routine .
The latter category of mourners to which I hesitatingly acknowledge within my salutary paragraph, are the very same who defiantly publish their galling retirement obituaries on the pages of Retirement-on-Line – and with tedious and alarming frequency too I must patronisingly add, ergo; those who struggle in pledging a Faustian pact with the natural laws of life, crazily shooting themselves in the foot with each and every vowel, consonant and phrase they limply and unconvincingly scribe, so- much-so that the rasping ricochets of their vociferous displeasure, kills-off any chance of them fully reaping the prosperous rewards of their otherwise, much-deserved retirement years.
Though it is perfectly natural to ‘feel’ for people who suffer an immeasurable depth of psychological throbbing at the merest suggestion or insinuation of retirement, I nonetheless stand, or sit aghast when deciphering copious stanzas of melancholic veiled syntax from both real-time - or prospective retirees, I’m certain that one could - and realistically would expect to skim through more upbeat epitaphs from those facing lynching, or of being informed that the last bullet was being reserved for him of her, all as a direct consequence of their enforced, disagreeable retirement issues.
A noteworthy number of ill-thought-out comments which I have reluctantly ingested of late, courtesy of a flock of disorientated, fledgling retirees, and that of the wrongful blame they attach to the decision-makers within the organisations who insensitively led them to the threshold of retirement perdition, is truly a most bewildering conclusion. Letters to Wendy strike me as being more akin to helpless pleas of near-infantile mitigation, in stark contrast to the much-needed key commentaries on the beauty of independent self-determination in a glorious, autumnal, post-employment setting.
When all is said and done, a basic confrontation with self-honesty should be enough to discourage the simplistic tendency of wantonly apportioning blame on previous employers, it is ‘Father Time; and ‘Mother Nature’ who eventually ‘call-the-the-shots’ after all! Disillusioned 60+ something’s have no moral right or justification to reclaim an existence that once merged or coincided with the birth of the Beatles - and that of the murderous elimination of JFK.
Should our persistent retiree complainants gracefully and compliantly decide to focus on the undeniable verity that the hellish consequences of being born, is that we are all sure to wither - and one distant day, finally expire. What we specifically do with our privileged, elongated time, and long before arrangements are made for our own funeral, surely, the next stage of life must represent more than melancholic, pitiful missives to ROL?
I believe it was the American author; Ray Bradbury, who once told a tale set far into the
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