• When it comes to job volatility, the market has been unkind since the 1980s
Retirement. For some, the word awakens fantasies about lazy days doing not very much, and just taking it easy and enjoying savings and the fruit of one’s investments after a lifetime of work.
For others, retirement is a nightmarish word that brings up the spectre of long days filled with boredom and penury.
Dear reader, before I go much further, let me just assure you that I have no current plans to retire. This is mainly because if I did, I would probably fall into the latter category and I would be terribly miserable.
That said, the reason I was thinking about retirement, theoretically if not practically, is the fact that I recently celebrated a birthday that, had I been a civil servant in 1980s Kenya, would have meant mandatory retirement.
Kenya was forced by IMF/World Bank conditionalities at the time to retire all civil servants at age 55, and for many, it was a time of deep dread. For a plethora of reasons, including the fact that the retire at 55 rule was quite suddenly implemented, many had not managed to put aside enough to see out their remaining years.
Also, for most people, 55 was an age where you still felt young enough to continue working and make a valuable contribution to society. And so to suddenly have to stop working and, more importantly, earning, was unimaginable, yet there they were.
Of course for a very few, retirement from the civil service meant that doors to various boardrooms, where you could serve as a director or a consultant, were suddenly open, and more work plus the amassing of greater fortunes beckoned.
But for many, it was a time of great uncertainty, and the measly few coins that made up a government pension didn’t help.
Even for those in private industry, for whom retirement was still pegged at 60, the thought of retirement was enough to panic people into making drastic decisions.
I remember a driver at an organisation where I worked in the early 1990s was in such fear of being retired that he began to dye his grey hair black to appear more youthful than his years.
When that didn’t quite do the trick, he took on a young wife and began a family with her in the hope that when the retirement axe fell, his employers would take pity on him and his young family and let him continue to work and provide for them.
If memory serves, the company extended his contract for a little longer, but it was never going to be enough for the poor fellow.
Around the time of my 25th birthday, the same company went through massive management changes, and some of us were forced to take redundancies which were disguised as early retirement.
I remember I was still living at home and went to my father and joked that while he was still working, I had been retired and was back living off him.
Lucky for me, barely two months later, I was offered my dream job at another publication. Even then, my stint there was a brief one, as just about a year and some months later, that publication also declared redundancies on a last-in-first-out basis.
Again, I was fortunate in that I was hired elsewhere and managed to continue my career as a journalist.
Speaking of retirement, I was looking at the world of politics both local and foreign and wondering when certain politicians ever consider giving up the rat race that is politics and settling down to a life away from the limelight.
Or do they fear that the rest of their lives — away from the levers of power, the adoration of supporters and the exciting cut and thrust of the political game — will be empty and meaningless?
I guess it really all depends on how they feel about themselves. What would I do in their shoes? To be perfectly honest, I am not ready to find out immediately, but perhaps the new chapter of my life will shine a light on the path to be taken.