And then. . . there's this: Life Stinks. Merry Christmas! | Catholic Culture
Merry Christmas to you and your families! It is a glorious and beautiful feast—with the tenderness and simplicity of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph—attracting us to worship the newborn King. Come, let us adore Him. On Christmas, we remember the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity—the Word made Flesh, Jesus—entering the world. He came on a mission to save us from our sins and open the doors to heaven.
But let’s face it. Most of us don’t think that’s enough.
Some of you might remember a hilarious movie from the 1970s. A cranky old guy on TV, fed up with the world, complains that the life situation is “bad, really bad” and he wasn’t “going to take it anymore!” So he calls on everyone to go to their windows and scream, “I’m mad as [Hades], and I’m not going to take it anymore!” For the uninitiated, the name of the movie was Network.
A lot of us feel the same way today. We’re tired of the lies and baloney. Honestly, many of us are tired of life. Oh, for the good old days: The days of the Cold War, the Tet Offensive, the Sands of Iwo Jima, Flanders Field, or Pickett’s Charge. Would that I had been born into, say, an Old South plantation with an easy life. No, wait, as long as I wasn’t one of the field slaves and never exposed to cholera, polio, or sepsis. What was dental care like in the 19th Century? Didn’t George Washington have wooden false teeth?
Every once and awhile. . .
Every once in a while what you're doing, how you are going about doing it, how you have done it, and what that means can hit you like a ton of bricks.
Down in the parking lot where I park every day, there used to be a car with a sticker that said this on it:
We all do things we say we never would
Soccer Mom
Quite true.
I suppose that's similar, in a way, the more grim
Most men lead lives of quiet desperation
Henry David Thoreau
Or not.
And then there's the observation by the observant:
#talkedtotheboss He said there is no place where we can stop & think “I’m good where I am.” We are called to a state of blessed discontentment; where we recognize the blessings of where we are while striving to know more & love more. Never stop growing.… instagr.am/p/CX_Ha-bLcZ8/
That, we might note, is called Blessed Discontentment, or Holy Discernment.
I frankly think there's a lot to that. I feel that from time to time, maybe frankly most of the time. But in my selfish way I'm not really grateful for it.
I'd like to feel contentment, quite frankly, but the origin of my present discontent isn't, I think, of the blessed variety so much as it is of the "Yeoman, you're an idiot", variety.
Added to that, I think, is the affliction of Generation Jones, that being that we're pretty risk-adverse. Or maybe we're like my father's generation, the Silent Generation, in that we feel we have to make huge sacrifice as by and large, we're not going to take the brass ring anyway, and better hang on to what we got.
I dunno. . .
Maybe it's my father's life being disrupted by the early death of his father, and then mine being disrupted by the early death of mine, preceded by the extreme illness of my mother for many years prior to his death.
Still, there's something to it. The art of compromise for a greater purpose over pursuit of dollars, which is the only American alternative, has merites to it. Entire cultures, in fact, once prized that, over what we do, that being apparently only money.
None of which is much salve for the first thing noted here.
Or for the fact that time runs out. Americans like to believe "your never too old", but you can be.
For example, the maximum age to go to work for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is 37 years old. Not that old. Does that makes sense? I don't know, but it's likely based on young people being in better physical shape than old ones, and the need for a person to be able to retire from Federal service by age 60.
The current maximum age to join the U.S. Army is 35 years old. And that's for active duty or any of its reserve components. For awhile it was up around 40, but they've apparently dropped it back down. That age is 28 for the Marine Corps. . . 28. It's 39 for the Navy and Air Force (38 for Air Force reservists), so they'll take "older" enlistees. It'a a bottoms out at 27 for the Coast Guard, which will take reservists up to 38.
You get the point, however. If you are sitting in your cubicle in Boston watching the Coast Guard cutters go out, and you are thinking, "you know, my job at Amalgamated Amalgamated sucks, I think I'll join the Coast Guard!", and you are 30, you aren't.
The Canadian military, I'd note, is the real outlier, FWIW. A national "never too old" policy, and something to do with how Canadian old age pensions work, caused the Canadian government to up their maximum enlistment age, or commission age, to 57 years old.
Truly. This is what their recruitment page states (I just looked it up for this super interesting thread):
To join as a Non-Commissioned Members are skilled personnel who provide operational and support services in the CAF. Non-Commissioned Members start out as recruits and are trained to do specific jobs. | To join as an Officers in the CAF hold positions of authority and respect. They are responsible for the safety, well-being and morale of a group of soldiers, sailors, air men or air women. Analyzing, planning, making decisions and providing advice are a few aspects of an Officer’s role. |
You are between 16 and 57 years old. If you are under 18 years old, you will need permission from your parent or guardian. | You are between 16 and 57 years old. If you are under 18 years old, you will need permission from your parent or guardian. |
You are a Canadian citizen. | You are a Canadian citizen. |
You have completed Grade 10 or Secondary IV (Quebec). | You have completed Grade 10 or Secondary IV (Quebec). |
You have, or are working towards, a Bachelor's Degree. If you do not meet this requirement, you may be eligible for one of our Paid Education programs. |
I meet all the criteria save for one. I'm 58.
Not that I was going to call the recruiting department, I wan't, but if I were, the answer I'd get is "go away, you geezer, eh?"
Makes sense, really. Who wants to serve under a 58 year old lieutenant who's a veteran of the US reserves system. "Why back in the day. . . "
Indeed, as the long-suffering readers of this blog know, all two or three of you, we've been doing day by day playbacks from the early 40s recently here, and had been doing the same for the late 10s and early 20s. This relates to the ostensible purpose of this blog. A person had to serve in the Frontier Army for 40 years in order to draw a pension, which very few enlistment men did, but which also explains why promotions were glacially slow in the Regular Army. Around 1900, however, the system was changed to allow early retirement after 30 years of service, with 75% of the benefit drawn, reduced to 60s% in 1924. That system also evolved in that time period such that, at first, if you had 40 years in the service you were put in the "retired list", absent some unusual exception. As a practical matter, that meant most servicemen left by age 60, if they were career men. In the early 20th Century, however, that was changed so that at age 64 you had to go.
This system was changed again just prior to World War Two as Gen. George Marshall wanted to clear out as many old soldiers as he could before the U.S. entered a new mechanized war. Tired of older ossified officers like Chief of Cavalry John Knowles Herr, he managed to bring in a 20 year early retirement system, again scaled so that those retiring didn't receive a full pension, and the mandatory retirement age dropped to 60. He then simply sidetracked most of the senior commanders in their 50s. Herr, I'd note, retired in 1945 at age 56, his career wrecked by his refusal to ever acknowledge that the age of the horse was over.
That system is the one the military still has, and most law enforcement agencies have it as well. Given the physical and mental toll that being a policemen seems to have on people, that makes sense. At least by my observation, after twenty years, most are ready to retire.
Not all, however, as the Wyoming Game & Fish Department used to require its wardens to retire at age 60, but some jerk occupying that position sued them and won, so now you don't have to retire. I'm 58, and I thought about becoming a Game Warden when I was young. If I could retire at 60 years old, I'd do it.
Or so I claim.
A similiar age restriction, I'd note, exists to become a Catholic Deacon. It varies by diocese, but at some point people age out. So, roughly, if you've been hearing a call to be a Deacon for your whole life and decide to act on it by, let's say, age 60, or in some areas, age 50, you are too late.
Being privately employed, and employed in a field where seemingly nobody ever retires, its actually difficult to imagine how retirement comes about. It's even more difficult for those around you to imagine it. Having said that, I could imagine my father retiring and urged him to do so. He was a professional also, but not a lawyer. He died at age 62, having never retired.
That's a bit haunting frankly. He never retired, but he was awfully tired. I receive occasional thanks for things he did even now, some 30 years or so after his death, which I appreciate but which also shows me how much he was identified by what he did. By his late 50s it was clear to me, as he was frank about it, that he'd had enough and he wanted to retire. I kept urging him to do it, but I was in university and he probably worried about the expense. I told him not to, that I'd be fine. I'd been in the National Guard as an undergrad, and I was willing to go back in as a law student. Indeed, I'd gotten out of the Guard as I'd believed the fable that law school is hard (any idiot can graduate from law school, truly), and didn't think I'd have time to be a Guardsmen. It turned out that I would have, and by my last two years I was well aware of that.
Well, he didn't retire. He was holding out for 63. He didn't make it. What hopes and goals were lost in that? I know a few which were irretrievably lost. . . or maybe not.
In some odd ways, perhaps because of my age, I tend to feel worse about people who experience that late career death than I do those who die in their 40s, oddly enough. Dying at that age is a disaster, most particularly for those around those who depart, but dying just before retirement age seems to have cheated somebody out of something they were working for.
On being cheated, I'll also note the postponed dream or goal.
My mother had a friend who was a banker. I didn't know him well, but my mother, who had no real interest in agriculture at all, always referred to him as a "rancher". He wasn't. He was a banker.
Now, there's nothing wrong with being a banker. But his story was that he'd grown up on a farm or ranch as a young man, and then worked his entire career as a banker. He'd never lost the interest in agriculture and it was pretty clear that's what he really wanted to be. Around retirement age, but prior to his retiring, he bought a small acreage. I'd not regard it as a farm, but it was in a farming belt, and he put up hay there.
Or, rather, he tried to. By that time, in his late 60s, after a lifetime of indoor work, he couldn't hack it physically. And his wife of many years, additionally, was in extremely poor physical health and had a serious allergy problem.
He ended up selling.
He's now passed away, but I wonder how a person reacts to that? You live for years hoping for one thing and then the toll of years won't let you do it. Is your conclusion that you should have done it in the first place?
Some people, I'd note, keep on keeping on as others require them to. I knew a physician at one time who worked right up until his death. I don't know how old he was at that time, but he was at least in his 60s. He was old enough to retire, and his not retiring was a topic of conversation. It turned out that he didn't, as he supported a large number of extended relatives with his income. He wanted to, but he his loyalty to his extended family kept him at his office.
Admirable? In some sense, to be sure.
And tragic also.
Which I guess takes us back to the first item here. Surely, occupying a worthwhile career that you have sought to enter and do, isn't a tragedy, even though staying too long may be. But what about working for years with a lingering "lost vocation" in the background? Surely, that is tragic. The American belief that "I'll be able to do that some day" is a crock, and realistically, people who live in that world should realize that age, health, economics and circumstances are in fact more likely than not to terminate some of those dreams. Some others not. A guy who dreamed of being a cowboy, for example, can, if he has the talent and skills, write about that. Some hobbies that are close to vocations, such as hunting and fishing, can usually be carried on well into advance years.
But we don't get any time back at all. Time can't be banked. Money acquired in hopes of a dream retirement can just as easily be lost to the worker by death.
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: "It might have been!"
Ah well! for us all some sweet hope lies
Deeply buried from human eyes:
And, in the hereafter, angles may
Roll the stone from its grave away.
