When Should One Retire?
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When Should One Retire?
August 10, 2010
By Dr Wong Wee Nam
08 August 2010SGPOLITICS.NET
“If I’d known that retirement was going to be this good I’d have done it the day after I left school!!!”
— Mickey White
Flowers know when to shrivel and die. Trees know when to shed their leaves. Animals know when they can no longer hunt. Even elephants know when to die.
Do Singaporeans know when to retire? Some of them don’t, many of them just can’t and most just don’t know how to.
Those who don’t are obviously the very well-paid. If you are getting an income of millions of dollars from your company, why would you want to give that up? I asked my long-retired mathematics teacher, aged 77, for his view on this and, with a mind still as sharp as his putt, he replied, “This is pure mathematical logic”.
Those who can’t are those who have, all their lives, been so lowly-paid that they do not have enough savings to retire. These people just have to continue working at their menial job, on a pay that is continually being depressed by cheaper foreign labour and praying that they would not be replaced.
For the Singaporeans who do not know how to retire, it is because all their lives they have only known how to work and slog in the name of productivity, but do not how to live and enjoy a life. Moreover how could they when the retirement age is periodically being extended and our venerated sage has advised that retiring is not the wise thing to do?
Happy Retirees
There is a time for everything. Retiring at the right time is not necessarily a bad thing. Furthermore, retirement from a job is not the same as retirement from living. A lion which has lost its teeth and can no longer hunt will starve to death. As human beings are capable of having family, friends and cultivating a variety of interests, they need not shrivel and die when they retire from a job.
For many of the happy retirees whom I know, retirement is just the beginning of another chapter of their lives. My primary two form master’s wife, also a retired teacher, aged 75, is a good example. She wears brightly coloured dresses and dyes her hair in matching colours. Her exuberant expression and vibrant spirit shows how much she enjoys her retired life.
Another is this 85 year old patient of mine who enjoys playing mahjong, helping out in church, meeting friends, cooking and wandering all over Singapore looking for food to eat. She once invited me for supper at 313 (I didn’t even know there was such a place then), knew exactly where to get the desert for me and then insisted on taking the MRT and bus home.
Unhappy Retirees
However not everyone is so fortunate. There are some who had been forced to retired because of ill-health.
Two nights ago, a friend called me up to asked me for some advice regarding a friend of his, aged 52, who went into a coma as a result of diabetes. This person had been unemployed because of a festering gangrene of his foot and he had refused treatment because he did not want to burden his family with hefty medical bills and also having to take care of him for the rest of his life. He would rather die.
I advised them to call for an ambulance immediately and bring him straight to hospital. When the ambulance came, he regained consciousness and refused to be sent to the hospital. To him, there is no meaning in retirement or living a life that is going to be very expensive for him.
Similarly, there are others who have been forced into retirement because they have lost their jobs during the recession or have been displaced by cheaper labour. Because they are middle aged, these people thus find it very hard to get another job again. This group of premature retirees is likely to lose their self-esteem and become depressed instead of enjoying their retirement. To them, postponing the retirement age and asking them not to retire is totally meaningless.
The Government’s Role
With an aging population, the number of both happy and unhappy retirees will grow. For their contribution to the prosperity of our nation, this group of citizens is entitled to a life in this country. To achieve this, there must be a change in attitude towards retirees by society, the government and the retirees themselves.
Instead of seeing them as economic burdens and discarding them as useless economic digits, the government should look to see how it could provide a favorable environment, a good infrastructure and appropriate social amenities to give a life to these people in their golden years.
In the early fifties, the government planned and provided health and social services for the poor and the baby boomers. In the next fifty years, the government should be planning and providing healthcare and social services for the retirees. There must also be social and community programmes to engage the retirees. They deserve all these because it is their blood and sweat in their productive years that have given the country its wealth.
Singapore is always building this hub and that hub. Have we ever thought of making Singapore a retirees’ hub? A retirees’ hub need not be detrimental to the country. It can spawn new goods and services that could fuel economic changes and also result in the development of skills and expertise that can be exported.
The task may be enormous and challenging, but think of the coffee shops in Geylang and the integrated resorts that have benefited tremendously from the patronage of the retirees. We can certainly do with more of other healthier programmes.
There is also the social benefit as well. Instead of encouraging the retirees to migrate or go to JB, such a hub would send a message to young Singaporeans that the State cares for them and it’s worthwhile to stay here for the rest of their lives.
Retirement Is Not a Bad Thing
Retirement is a fact of life. It is not a bad thing at all. It helps in the renewal of leadership, in rejuvenating the workforce and in the removal of stumbling blocks in the system. All workers have a use-by-date whether they like it or not. An actress, when she is young and pretty, will get all the lead roles. As she grows older, she will act as someone’s mother. Later on she may still get some cameo roles as a grandmother. She should then retire because beyond that no director will cast her as a great-grandmother as there would be hardly any script for great-grandmothers.
However not everyone is aware of his or her expiry date. No one will ever think of himself as a stumbling block. This blind spot is often found in civil and political leaders and patriarchs of family businesses. These people always like to think that without them everything will disintegrate and hence are very reluctant to relinquish their powers. Sadly they often end up being like a goalkeeper who has lost his reflexes, does not realize it and starts to let in goals. Or they end up like the analogy once used in Parliament: an old 75 rpm gramophone that keeps jumping back to the same groove.
The Parable of Zhuang Zi (庄å�)
There is a Chinese idiom害群之马when literally translated means “a horse that is harmful to the herd”. It is used to describe a person who is detrimental to a team. However, it is not easy for most people, especially powerful people, to realize and accept that they could be a harmful horse and retire gracefully. Only a person as enlightened as the Yellow Emperor will be able to do so.
In Chapter 24 of his Complete Works entitled Xu Wu Gui (å¾�æ— é¬¼), Zhuang Zi wrote :
One day the Yellow Emperor set out with six sages to seek the advice of a very wise man, Great Wei (大隗) at Mount Juci （具茨山）. In the wild countryside near Xiang Cheng City, they lost their way and could find no one to ask directions from. Fortunately they chanced upon a young boy herding horses, and asked him for directions.
“Do you know the way to Mount Juci?” they asked.
“Yes.”
“And do you know where Great Wei is to be found?”
“Yes.”
“What an extraordinary boy!” the Yellow Emperor exclaimed. “You not only know the way to Mount Juci, but you even know where Great Wei is! May I ask you how to govern the empire?”
“Governing the empire is no big deal,” said the young boy. “It is just like your excursion. Move on and leave your worries behind. When I was little, I used to go wandering but unexpectedly I contracted a disease that made me giddy and which blurred my eyesight. An elderly man advised me to mount on the chariot of the sun and go wandering about in the wilds and not to worry about it. Now my illness is slowly getting better and I intend to go wandering again. Governing the empire just means doing what I’m doing. No big deal. Just go with the flow.”
“I know that governing of the empire does not concern you,” the Yellow Emperor said. “Nevertheless, I would like to ask you how it should be done.”
The young boy declined to comment but when the Yellow Emperor remained insistent. So the boy said, “Governing the empire is not much different from herding horses. Just get rid of the horses that are harmful to the herd.”
The Yellow Emperor suddenly became enlightened. Addressing the boy as “Heavenly Master,” he kowtowed twice and retired.
There must be much wisdom in Zhuang Zi’s parable. Otherwise how could it be around for more than 2300 years?
�原文】Original Text
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I retired at 42.
