JAKARTA, INDONESIA — Metaphorically, December is to an elderly or tigúlang while January, which is the first month of the year, is to a new born or bag-ong natawo.
It is our practice that as more months or years are added to our lives, shown by the candles on our birthday cakes, we are announcing that we are getting older–number is a measure of aging or pagka-tigúlang.
Some are anxious of their ability to live longer perhaps due to risky lifestyle and environment. For example, a high school friend commented on my Facebook pictures of my mother’s 75th birthday if we could ever reach that age. Statistically, women have higher life expectancy compared to men due to life style differences and risk exposures. The women constitute 56 percent of the senior citizens or elderly as compared to 44 percent who are men of the six million Filipinos or 6.8 percent of the 2010 population.
Eight years from now I have the option to retire provided my two sons would finally graduate and have jobs. By law, however, I still have five years to continue working after I will be 60 years old until I should finally abandon the routine of going to school and teach or research, or of meeting the required number of hours and days in a week for the work that I am paid for.
By my 65th birthday, I would then expect a letter from the Human Resource Manager reminding me that my productive years are over, and I should start processing my retirement papers. But if the system will still need me, I have again the option to be in as a consultant or an adjunct professor. Or I should really say goodbye and enjoy my retirement in a farm in Bayawan or cruising with my wife (like my good friend Atty. Al).
Some elderly I know, who are retired but not tired, are rehired and they have diverse reasons for hanging on. They still have to work, either fulltime or part time, because they still feel that they could be productive and, therefore, useful to the system. Others continue to work because they did not have enough retirement benefits to sustain their medical needs or they have to finish paying the amortization of a house or they still have to send grandchildren to school.
For a few, working beyond retirement or joining actively in civic and church organizations is more due to the satisfaction they get from being busy. Certainly, these are elderly people who must have received much retirement benefits or had made great investments for themselves and on their children when they were yet productive. They do not worry now where to get their daily sustenance and maintenance of medicines.
Sociologically, there are theories that explain, but differently, why humans have diverse experiences and conditions when they become elderly resulting from how society views and eventually treats those who had retired from productive life. Such views and treatment had likewise influenced the psychology of the elderly that transcends as to how they think, behave and relate with other people. Subsequently, the subculture of the elderly is formed and sustained which in some instances has alienated them from the mainstream, that in some instances, has failed to understand them.
Functionalist perspective explains that the elderly people have already reached their maximum productive period and should now leave the labor market to provide opportunities to the younger workers. This is in accordance to the capitalist notion of maximizing profits from those physically and mentally able. The elderly have depreciated their value, and despite they are rehired after retirement by the same employment agency, they are paid less than what they had enjoyed during their productive years. The worse scenario is when they are perceived as already “useless” and should just get support either from their families or the government if they have limited social security benefits or none at all.
From a conflict perspective, the condition of the elderly is just a reflection or a consequence as to how society divides people into those that own much wealth and those with less. In other words, the poor people have high probability to become more miserable when they become elderly as compared to the rich who have enough resources to enjoy and sustain them as they live for more years. In fact, the life expectancy of the rich, in general, is higher than the poor because they can afford more sophisticated hospital care and expensive medicine.
Meanwhile, symbolic interactionism gives more emphasis on how the individual elderly views and appreciates the process and condition of aging. It is the attitude towards life and being an elderly that determines the well-being of those who had reached the legal retirement age. Symbolic interactionist, therefore, says that being an elderly is “only a state of mind” and how one thinks to make full advantage of the freedom from routine work prescribed by labor law influences whether or not to enjoy the newly acquired senior citizenship status.
In sum, although culture influences how society treats the elderly people as well as how the latter regard themselves, it is the individual agency that has a significant role in determining what life of an elderly one wishes to experience. It is something that should not be left to chance but must be planned now. And this goes to say that December is not the end but a period for another year or beginning.
