Our Wheel is Turning.
by Julie Grenness
(Melbourne, Australia. )
Yes, retirees, it is time to welcome life's later years. Our wheel of aging is turning. We accept this, and accept our own and each other's decisions.
Personally, I am part of the bulge in retirement today, featuring citizens born in the 1950's. Globally, there are estimated to be over 700 million of us.
In reality, due to many reasons, more baby boomers our age are retiring these days. Some do choose to work on, with valid reasons. Retirees now leaving the workforce are taking away years of valuable experience, knowledge and reliability, no matter what the field of employment was.
This is leading to increases in shortfalls in skilled workers. Here, daily, we are reading advertisements for hospitality staffing, trade persons, lawn mowing staff, or relief teaching staff, or for health professionals. We all rely on such people at some stage.
Our ageing wheel is turning, any retiree can develop any health or financial needs. As a generation, we boomers are more likely to have acquired tertiary education, computer literacy, to have quit smoking, and to have controlled any alcohol consumption. So many of us are champion ex-smokers, we shall probably have to handle the COPD issue as it occurs.
The retirement generation are still big on exercising, depending on physical mobility. As our ageing wheel turns and we reach a frail elderly status, we shall aim to be the aware generation. We shall want to age with dignity, expecting person-centered approaches from staff and funding.
That is an optimist writing. At this stage, a person-centered approach involves a pre-booked very brief telehealth phone chat with my doctor. He or she then texts a script to my iphone. I undertake a tour of the local pharmacy. This is very efficient and state of the art. It works, okay?
Now I am wondering about exactly who is going to perform the practical approaches to our frail ageing needs. As our wheel keeps turning, there is going to be bulge in the geriatric racing team-'our generation.'
Let's hope the boomer retirees can keep on keeping on. We are going to create an as yet unknown demand on pensions, and health requirements. There shall have to be an increase in trained staff.
Like who? Shall it be the young ones?
These millennials could all scroll on their phones before they could talk. But does this mean they are going to want to change our bed sheets and bedpans? Instead, maybe they had better start inventing some kindly, specific robots, just for us. Sort of not funny.
I am wondering if any retiree can really prepare for being frail and aged. These are all bridges we shall have to cross, one day, as our wheel of ageing turns.......
