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Comment by ulf-77723 | Hacker News Reader

The article states that a raising amount of people in the US still work, albeit their age and it feels a little strange to me. Ginny, probably got so old because she was working and had a purpose every day. Being 100 and still capable of working is a blessing

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Many old people do valuable work even though they are not in the workforce. They are the backbone of many voluntary organizations, they are often the backbone of their apartment complex taking on janitorial work and administrative work, they are baby sitters, home work assistants, they taken on small jobs no one else want to like election clerks and exam monitors. Some start up a small business so the community can get access to their expertise. One guy I know closed his musical instruments repair shop a few years ago, but started up again in smaller scale because there were no one else local to do the work.

My grandfather retired and realized he had no hobbies to speak of, and no desire to travel. So he went back to doing what he enjoyed, he worked part time for the city doing sewer inspections. He’d use a bar and open a manhole, and do whatever it is he did then. He did this until into his 80s, until he passed a few years ago. I guess he just liked being useful.

My other grandpa is a retired design engineer, extremely handy, and while his body is failing from Parkinson’s, in his 80s he’s still smart as a whip. He was working around his farm until he hit 80 when his wife started displaying dementia signs.

I still call him up any time I need advice on fixing stuff round the house or my car.

> Being 100 and still capable of working is a blessing

A much under-appreciated blessing. At any age.

Over the past half-ish century, I've visited any number of elderly relatives and friends who were living in the US's long-term care facilities. However bright the decor, or kind the care staff - there is a very bleak "people whose ability to do anything useful has died, waiting for the rest of death" aura to them.

Over my life I have learned “you must be useful to be valued” and I’m desperately trying to unlearn it.

Reason one is that I should learn to chill out and relax.

Reason two is that I know old age will hit me very hard once I feel “useless” and I should prepare for that

I've personally had a decent amount of luck with trying to reframe this sort of sentiment from "being useful" to "having purpose".

Right now, yes, its true that a lot of my day to day purpose is driven by participating in the economy and setting myself up for the life I'd like to have in my later years, and I get genuine validation from solving problems and collaborating with people in my day job.

But sometimes, my purpose is to go snowboarding and forget about work. Or to help a friend fix their bicycle. Or to get lost in conversation with a new person I'm dating. As far as any of us know, we only get one turn to be alive on this rock, so we might as well purposefully enjoy it as much as we try to purposefully be useful.

If you look at Ginny Oliver from the article, it might be fair to question whether she was as useful on a lobster boat at 105 as she might have been in her youth. But I doubt she was concerned with usefulness since she had such sense of purpose.

People can be properly useful till their last moment. Caring friend, loving reliable family member - those mean endlessly more than some senior position in some corporation that come and go and with enough distance to see things are mostly meaningless.

You don't need to rewire your core, just look things from right perspective.

Yes. But there is a very long and winding gray spectrum between a belligerently entitled layabout, and "your daily work output no longer excuses your continued consumption of our oxygen, meatbag".

Why not learn how to catch lobsters?

Our neighborhood park maintenance volunteers are 80% old ladies in their 70s and 80s. Without things to do, body and mind atrophies. While it’s true that increasing number of people are having to work longer than they need to, a lot of them don’t do it out of necessity and is probably the reason why they’re still alive and kicking at that age.

growing number of Americans who extend their working days well past the typical retirement age as the cost of living in the US has soared, wages have stagnated and many therefore have been unable to save.

Calling this a blessing in the larger context is unconscionable. The USA is the richest country in the world. If someone needs to work into their 100s, it is a sign of failure from our political leaders.

Additionally, "working" and "having a purpose" should not be conflated like this. These are separate things.

What's unconscionable is that people feel entitled to cherry pick stuff like this and then use it as fodder for shameless moral posturing. The damn near next sentence says this was not the case with her, it clearly wasn't her job, it was what she wanted to spend her life doing.

I don't wonder why public discourse is the way that it is.

I agree that it's unconscionable to consign a centenarian to unwanted labor, but the article says this is not the case for Ginny.

Also, wages in the US have not stagnated at all. Wage growth in the poorest quartile has outpaced inflation and that of the other 3 quartiles.

Perhaps this is a bit of projection by the British Guardian.

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