Non-retirement

These few days, there have been talk that the retirement age will be raised to 68 years old. Needless to say, many people have been deeply annoyed by the idea. I'm not too sure of the economic or political reasons behind this move, I can only guess that the government managed to calculate that this would be an ideal retirement age, so as to maintain a viable economy.

We can suspect that this idea was very much motivated by Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew. After all, he proposed that retirement will only cause degeneration of the mind and body, and that every human being should seek external stimuli to keep on going in life, that translating to work.

I'm actually a big fan of that idea, but only if there is passion for the job. For me, it'll be great if I can specialise in a field that I like, then continue working until my body fails me. It'll be ideal if at age 70, I can still go around attending conferences or teaching medical students.

Nevertheless, we should also take note that not everybody has the good fortune to find a career that they are passionate about. Many people just take up a job to make ends meet. It's very believable that many of them will rust after collecting their pension, but they have the right to rest if they want to.

Moreover, there are some jobs that simply cannot be undertaken by the elderly- namely all forms of menial labour. It'll be terrible for a 67 year old man to continue sweeping the floor despite his rheumatoid arthritis and diabetic retinopathy, simply for the sake of collecting pension to survive.

Nevertheless, there is no other solution to the problem, at least that's what I think as a layman. The other option is to import more foreign workers, which as you know is causing increasing social tension. My only solution? Find something you like in life and pursue it, as long as you have the good fortune to. I understand some people in Singapore have subsistence issues and can't really do the things that they like, I have no answer to that.

Being an inexperienced 22 year old, you don't really have the right to judge who is more correct, be it the middle class who favour retirement or the higher ups who want to raise the retirement age, but you can always choose your role models. It could be someone who's going strong even in old age (think LKY, Alex Ferguson or Bernie Ecclestone), or a jaded middle aged salaryman lamenting about many aspects of his work and looking forward to the day he gets his pension. The choice is yours, and as long as I'm not overly restricted by some domestic issue or unfortunate event, and as long as my faculties are intact, I know mine.