Posts in this series are now listed at https://gnwmythr.blogspot.com/p/recovering-from-corporate-life.html.
I’ve just had a second cishet male try to “hook up” with me on LinkedIn.
Now, when I texted a friend about this when I found it earlier today (my partner is still sleeping), I was going to joke about it - on the grounds that, as we used to say, I am most definitely “not an oil painting”: age, stress and ill-health have been unkind - when the thought occurred to me that this is symptomatic of one of the many forms of loneliness that neoliberalism, capitalism, and superficial responses to the search for meaning in our lives have caused.
I have already indicated in the preceding paragraph that I have family and friends, but I have met many people throughout my former day job who used their dedication to “the company” as a way of giving their life a sense of meaning.
Stuart Holroyd wrote about the desire to be part of something larger than oneself in “Briefing for the Landing on Planet Earth”, and I agree with his comment that this is an underacknowledged motivation in life.
However, ways of satisfying that need can be extremely destructive - and such destructive solutions include, for instance, extremism, colonial militarism, toxic nationalism, violent sports fandom, and ... capitalism.
In the case of one of those I mentioned from LinkedIn, he had experienced a series of personal tragedies (including his family being killed in a car accident - that he was not involved in) and thus his circumstances were somewhat understandable, and I am not going to respond to the second after an extremely lame attempt at praising my appearance (more on that in a moment), but I have come across many people - predominantly, but not exclusively, cismale - who have built their sense of meaning around commercialism (i.e., the company they work for, and the system that upholds it), and are lost when they are no longer involved in it - especially if they’ve caused a family break-up by their unbalanced adherence to “the company”. As an example, my adoptive father floundered initially when he retired.
(Do they understand the imbalance of power, and that their loyalty will never be reciprocated?)
Females (cis and other) may have a similar, but often healthier - or at least less destructive, issue: being lost when the family they are caring for leaves home, or elderly parents are no longer around to be cared for.
This is generally healthier as it is built on caring, but there can be problems with it as well - such as obsessiveness about children’s lives and careers - living vicariously through others - or unreasonable expectations.
I have sometimes wondered if my ex- and I were brought together so I could break what had become an unhealthy expectation of my ex- being looked after by one of her children (that ex- had done some goo things, to be clear - such as moving to the city I was living in to break an unhealthy social connection for that child of hers).
Commonly, this is described as empty nest syndrome, mostly for females but all parents, and relevance deprivation syndrome for those who lose power - mostly males, and often changes in career, but the concept could also apply to all people who retire.
In my case, my life meaning has come predominantly from my spirituality - which led to a life of human rights activism, but I have also had various forms of creative pursuits - such as writing, which has, you may have noticed, increased, as I move into retirement ...
I don’t need to try to “hook up” with people through work-based networks. I have empathy for those who do, and want the system that created that to change - especially as that system will increasingly deny many people the opportunity to retire.
Blessed be.
PS - as so often happens with these posts, a couple of articles have come my way that add a useful perspective to this:
- Being the main breadwinner didn’t necessarily keep married mums in work during the pandemic;
- The ‘great resignation’ didn’t happen in Australia, but the ‘great burnout’ did.
If you appreciated this post, please consider promoting it - there are some links below, and there’s also Instagram and Mastodon.
Vote Yes for the Voice in Australia - see this backgrounder.
Finally, remember: we generally need to be more human being rather than human doing, and to mind our Mӕgan.
