Compared to the Northern Crested, a bivalve mollusk found in Icelandic waters that turned out to be 507 years old, humans are a great amateur in terms of life expectancy. That doesn’t prevent him from having many notes on his singing during that short flash that breaks through the eternal darkness.
Until an old age, by the way, because now all those people also appear to be aggrieved.
Old and lonely is not only the title of a book by Gerard Reve, but apparently also an almost inevitable fate whose demise begins with discrimination in the labor market, as I learned, including from Mieke Vogels at The appointment this week. Older people still work often and a lot, but that is not recognized as work, she said seriously while Walter Zinzen sat next to her, nodding approvingly.
I was inclined to nod along, because in this day and age any idiot who wants to build a prison in Kosovo for what he unashamedly calls ‘illegal crap’ gets much more media attention than the elderly Sister Immaculata, ‘that paralyzed old woman for thirty-four years. washes people, changes their beds, and feeds them’, to roughly quote the same Gerard Reve again.
But is that reasoning correct?
“People want to work all their lives and get respect for it, that distinguishes them from the animals,” I heard further, but then I thought, slightly panicking: the dark forces of neoliberalism have even penetrated those who once wanted to Live Differently.
I shouted gloomily at my television: dear madam, people do not want to work until their old age but want to feel useful and have the right to laziness.
In 1883, Paul Lafargue even wrote a pamphlet advocating a three-hour working day, which would keep workers in charge of their time. But in our day and age you apparently have to work until just before the gracious nurse turns the morphine tap all the way on, and if you don’t get recognition for that then the United Nations must take decisive action.
Fortunately, not everyone is convinced of this, as was evident from a recent conversation with my mother-in-law, who, at 91, wants to spend the time allotted to her as pleasantly as possible. Every day she gathers in the early evening with the group of friends from her service apartment. People like to crack a bottle of wine and recently started playing the Lotto again.
“If we win, we will rent a limousine, buy the most expensive clothes and have an outrageously expensive meal in Brussels,” she said cheerfully.
I happily acknowledged that I thought that was a good idea.
