A while ago, V and I were watching a group of 60-something folks at a get-together. They had worked hard, saved their money, and were now finally living the life they had always wanted to live. V wondered if that was the ideal path to chart a life - work hard first, enjoy later. I felt it had been true for them, but would not for us.
Even though all of us set out to create our own individual destiny, each generation seems to have its own response to the time it lives in. In my own amateur way, I tried to decode what I meant.
Post-independence, India was ideal for entrepreneurs as a new nation needed industry where it was imperative to take risks and think big. The idealism of pre-independent India still reigned and plans for the future were nation-centric. Thus then, to think big would be in the air. The generation that came after felt the need to sustain the life force of the nation and thus the Middle Class rose. They worked hard and saved to enjoy later. Their goals being to secure the basics in a growing population. People started to move from villages to the cities as agriculture no longer gave them the life they aspired for. There were much demand for respectable government jobs that one could stick to till retirement and later enjoy a pensioner's life.
The generation after needed to do something drastic to jump the stagnation of jobs. They moved out of the country, worked abroad, found any job they could, because they wanted to make something of their lives, they wanted to be rich and successful. Money order economies came about. Few returned. My generation thus had relatives living abroad, Misha magazines, cultural exchange programmes and later, the internet and the rise of creative professions. It was also part of the brain drain - educated people travelling abroad to share their intelligence. The present generation travels, but to experience, to be part of another culture, to widen their perspective of the world. It is seeking meaning perhaps. Much earlier than most would have in the past.
I read The Ant and the Grasshopper story as a child. Hard working ant saving up for a harsh winter. Happy-go-lucky grasshopper living it up and regretting it. I think we are somewhere in between. Tim Ferriss, in his book The Four Hour Work Week, speaks of mini-retirements taken throughout. Work some, enjoy some and so on. What has also altered the glory of retirement is the progress in medicine - we are now living longer lives, and thus will have a much longer retirement than generations before us.
The question for us then is not how we want our post-retirement life to be, but how we will live the rest of our life, starting now.
1 comment:
Finally being human, I guess. Lovely insight.
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