The People Who Kill Time; Kill Themselves!
Contributed By - Dr. Jaswant Singh Sachdev, M.D., F.A.A.N*
When a 105 years old resident of California was asked as to why he is working at this age and not retiring to take it easy? He responded, “What will I do except to sit home and kill time?” He then added what is stated in the heading i.e. “The people who kill time; kill themselves”. He finally turned philosophical and said, “Activity is life and life is activity.” Being a farmer and a soldier, he highlighted the well-known characteristic of his clan. “Farmers and soldiers never die in bed”.
A farmer from Punjab, he arrived in the central California at the age of 68 after serving in Indian Army. First, he worked in a farm owned by his son performing odd jobs. With time and experience, he assumed the responsibility of running the office, managing telephone and supervising employees in his son’s farm. When asked to apply for pension, he responded, “for what? After all what have I done in this country to ask for pension”?
Learning about him, my belief further strengthened about the concept that human beings, irrespective of age, would always want to work rather than stay idle. Internet search revealed an article in 1670 by a French mathematician and philosopher, Braise Pascal who wrote, “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone”. A quote by James Terry White, mentioned by Brett and Kate McKay, on Feb 29, 2016 with the title “In: A Man’s Life: On Manhood” and under the heading “Idleness Kills Manliness” it was reported, “It is not necessary for a man to be actively bad in order to make a failure in life; simple inaction will accomplish it. Nature has everywhere written her protest against idleness; everything which ceases to struggle and remains inactive, rapidly deteriorates….” Isn’t it so true!
Yet more often than not, in my native country, a person has to retire, especially from the government job, at a fairly earlier age compared to Western world. There are not many opportunities for retired individuals to find jobs suiting them and unfortunately that is the end of the story. All what is left to do is to stay idle and kill time. Of course, people in the established family business are rather fortunate as they can keep themselves engaged for a limited time circumstances permitting.
Those who do not fit the bill in either one of the situations, their lives merely boil down to what the latter half of the title of this essay points to i.e. ‘kill time.’ This took my train of thoughts to the childhood scenes of my neighborhood where many of the elderly neighbors would be found sitting in the door steps of their homes dozing off and gradually withering away, helplessly watching the time pass by. And this was all they could do. Those with a bit more awareness would sit around on a Chaupal in the shade of a Peepal tree and also kill time but by playing cards or in discussions. An upward swing in the lifespan with consequent escalation in physical ailments and boredom of loneliness brings home the futility of old age adding to the problem.
One hoped that with the progress all around us, the situation might have changed back home. Rhetoric aside such is not the case. Akshay Deshmane reports in the “News” on 25/9/18 that the unemployment rate in India is now highest in 20 years. Another report co-written by a group of researchers, policymakers, journalists and civil society activists, from the Center for Sustainable Employment in the Azim Premji University has concluded "It was said that India's problem is not unemployment but underemployment and low wages. But a new feature of the economy is a high rate of open unemployment over five percent overall." This was based on National Sample Survey Office and the Employment-Unemployment Survey (EUS) of the Labor Bureau’s findings of 2015-16.
If this were not enough the educated unemployed young people are also on the rise as the education imparted does not match with what the market needs. Unemployment rate for the educated, or should we say ‘wrongly-educated’, is more than 3 times than that of the uneducated.
In the West, elderly retired people, not withstanding their age, can work part time if they so desire and have the needed skills. As to the ‘rather older employees’, the model of Wal-Mart has always attracted me. It is a pleasure to find people even over the age of 80 standing in front of these giant stores and greeting the customers if nothing else. It provides them a safe place to spend their day with whatever little they could make in terms of return, over and above their pensions. Leaving home and standing up or moving around in a protracted environment for few hours of the day, keeps them healthy. An interaction with the people keeps their minds occupied.
I always felt a need for paying direct attention to the so-called young retirees in my native land so as to help them find part-time employment based on their education and skills. An exclusive registry for retired people having skills that could be matched with the availability of jobs in a given field is the need of the hour. Obviously there will always be elderly people unable to find what they are looking for, become helpless and thus end up killing time. However this could not be said with certainty unless and until sincere efforts are made in all the avenues by those at the helm of affairs.
*The author of several books on Indian diaspora issues