Why are Boomers so damn busy?

Socrates remarked that the unexamined life is not worth living. There’s something in that, but it’s a question of balance. Picture: File / Liam Kidston

I had an uncle who gave the impression he would never really feel that he had retired until he got to sit down in an easy chair from the start of the day and spend as long as he liked reading a book he had chosen purely for the pleasure it would give him.

He lived into his 80s and I don’t think he ever got to that point, changing house a couple of times in retirement, always involved in projects around the house, at the church, with his wife, lots of travelling.

My father was similar in a slightly different way. He didn’t formally retire from the workforce until his late 70s, when he suffered a heart attack. He lived for another 10 years mostly in quite good health.

But he too always had a big book which he was going to read when he got time. And he was always too busy in the meantime.

Too busy with adult kids, grandkids, church and community, with my mother, with his academic interest in certain types of music and certain periods of history, with the house. Yet while he took a long time to get around to that one big book, he did read lots of other things along the way.

I don’t remember my father or my uncle ever using the term retirement about themselves. Yet I would certainly not classify their post employment years as a failure. They were busy and productive.

Viktor Frankl, the great Austrian psychiatrist who survived Hitler’s death camps, said his time in the camps gave him a unique laboratory experiment in what a human being most needs. Frankl’s conclusion was that the greatest need in all human beings is meaning.

Most of us express our efforts to achieve meaning in part through the things we do. Contemplative monks and nuns find their meaning mainly in contemplative prayer. But for most people life is a doing thing.

If the paid work we do is actively disagreeable we might think its meaning lies only in earning a living, being able to look after our family or whatever. But if the work is agreeable and valuable then there’s no real reason to stop altogether at 65, and fewer and fewer people do.

Almost everyone I know who is in reasonable health answers the question: how are you going? by responding one way or another that they are insanely busy. I used to think it was surely impossible for everyone to be busy and this must for many have been hollow boasting.

In fact I think most people are telling the truth. They try hard, they work hard, they positively multiply the tasks they have so that it provides about 10 per cent more work than they can readily accomplish in the time they have. Socrates remarked that the unexamined life is not worth living. There’s something in that, but it’s a question of balance. The un-busy life is not what most people want either. A life spent entirely in introspection and self expression would look something like the ghastly, if at times compelling, Kardashians, or Harry and Meghan. The ability to find persecution and misfortune in the circumstances of a life almost insanely indulgent and privileged is also not uncommon.

But most older folks that I know, unless they are suffering intense health problems or their spouse or children are in distress, are predominantly grateful for the good lives they have and the good lives they’ve led. Saying thanks is pretty healthy, even if you never really get around to that book in that easy chair.