Bearing Witness: Retirement From the Wrong Side of the Divide
I'm very confused. I think this article is a good fit for HD, but I'm really not sure if anything I write is suitable anymore. Hopefully, I'm not offending anyone posting this piece to the forum.
I bumped into a guy I played with as a kid. He's six foot six and built like a linebacker, but he looks old and worn out now—forty years in a hot tarmac crew hasn't been kind. He asked me what I was doing these days. I never told him I was retired. I vaguely talked about juggling lots of commitments and left it at that. I wasn't lying. I have sporting commitments, and I juggle social and travel schedules with more affluent people.
I'm sometimes uncomfortable telling certain people I'm retired. My social circle is very diverse from a socio-economic point of view—that's a combination of randomness and a callback to my family history, growing up in a deprived public housing scheme. The ties that bind are still there; I'm friends with some pretty dodgy but interesting characters.
These characters don't mix with my more affluent friends, and I don't make any effort to bring the different circles together. I genuinely think it would be the equivalent of throwing water on a cooking oil fire—an incendiary and explosive combination. It wouldn't end well. A dinner party or restaurant gathering would be an alien concept. A lot of pints, pool, and a few games of darts along with very, very strongly worded banter is the perfect night, preferably without your wife. It might sound stereotypical, but it's reality. I still join the craic and show my face a few times a year. It's very different but refreshing.
This social disconnect between worlds is very real and, to my mind, very concerning for society as a whole. Straddling this divide at such a personal level has rammed home the ever-widening financial gap that, although always there, has definitely been accelerating over the last five years or so. My friend Nigel is a 62-year-old self-employed builder. Things are tight. The fuel injectors on his van packed in, and he's scrambling to get another truck on the road. No van, no work, no money. That's the grim reality.
The discomfort around saying I'm retired isn't about modesty—it's about the sheer unfairness of it. I know too many people, good people, who've worked themselves into the ground and still can't see a way out. They're not lazy or feckless; they're just trapped in a system that's rigged against them from the start. Low wages, insecure work, rent that eats half their income before they've bought a jug of milk. Retirement isn't even on their radar as a realistic prospect—it's a fantasy for other people, the ones who got lucky or started with advantages they never had.
What really gets me is watching mates from back home still grafting in their sixties, bodies breaking down, knowing they'll probably work until they physically can't anymore. There's no pot of gold waiting, no pension worth mentioning, just the grim arithmetic of benefits that don't cover the bills. Meanwhile, I'm out—done, finished, free to do what I like. The randomness of it seems wrong. We started from similar places, same schemes, same schools, but a few breaks here, a different choice there, and our trajectories diverged completely. They're still in the struggle; I'm not. It doesn't feel like something I earned through superior virtue. Not everyone can own the means of production.
And here's what really worries me: this isn't getting better, it's getting worse. The gap between those who can retire with dignity and those who'll work until they drop has widened dramatically in the last few years. Pensions have been gutted, housing costs have exploded, and the precarious nature of work means people can't build anything stable anymore. When I'm around people still stuck in that grind, saying "I'm retired" feels less like sharing news and more like rubbing salt in a wound. I don't know how to fix it. I've got a unique vantage point. I think the least I can do is bear witness to the inequality before I slink back to my middle-class retirement lifestyle. It's not much, but it's all I have. The simple fact is: sometimes hard work and superior effort is met only with superior exhaustion.
I bumped into a guy I played with as a kid. He's six foot six and built like a linebacker, but he looks old and worn out now—forty years in a hot tarmac crew hasn't been kind. He asked me what I was doing these days. I never told him I was retired. I vaguely talked about juggling lots of commitments and left it at that. I wasn't lying. I have sporting commitments, and I juggle social and travel schedules with more affluent people.
I'm sometimes uncomfortable telling certain people I'm retired. My social circle is very diverse from a socio-economic point of view—that's a combination of randomness and a callback to my family history, growing up in a deprived public housing scheme. The ties that bind are still there; I'm friends with some pretty dodgy but interesting characters.
These characters don't mix with my more affluent friends, and I don't make any effort to bring the different circles together. I genuinely think it would be the equivalent of throwing water on a cooking oil fire—an incendiary and explosive combination. It wouldn't end well. A dinner party or restaurant gathering would be an alien concept. A lot of pints, pool, and a few games of darts along with very, very strongly worded banter is the perfect night, preferably without your wife. It might sound stereotypical, but it's reality. I still join the craic and show my face a few times a year. It's very different but refreshing.
This social disconnect between worlds is very real and, to my mind, very concerning for society as a whole. Straddling this divide at such a personal level has rammed home the ever-widening financial gap that, although always there, has definitely been accelerating over the last five years or so. My friend Nigel is a 62-year-old self-employed builder. Things are tight. The fuel injectors on his van packed in, and he's scrambling to get another truck on the road. No van, no work, no money. That's the grim reality.
The discomfort around saying I'm retired isn't about modesty—it's about the sheer unfairness of it. I know too many people, good people, who've worked themselves into the ground and still can't see a way out. They're not lazy or feckless; they're just trapped in a system that's rigged against them from the start. Low wages, insecure work, rent that eats half their income before they've bought a jug of milk. Retirement isn't even on their radar as a realistic prospect—it's a fantasy for other people, the ones who got lucky or started with advantages they never had.
What really gets me is watching mates from back home still grafting in their sixties, bodies breaking down, knowing they'll probably work until they physically can't anymore. There's no pot of gold waiting, no pension worth mentioning, just the grim arithmetic of benefits that don't cover the bills. Meanwhile, I'm out—done, finished, free to do what I like. The randomness of it seems wrong. We started from similar places, same schemes, same schools, but a few breaks here, a different choice there, and our trajectories diverged completely. They're still in the struggle; I'm not. It doesn't feel like something I earned through superior virtue. Not everyone can own the means of production.
And here's what really worries me: this isn't getting better, it's getting worse. The gap between those who can retire with dignity and those who'll work until they drop has widened dramatically in the last few years. Pensions have been gutted, housing costs have exploded, and the precarious nature of work means people can't build anything stable anymore. When I'm around people still stuck in that grind, saying "I'm retired" feels less like sharing news and more like rubbing salt in a wound. I don't know how to fix it. I've got a unique vantage point. I think the least I can do is bear witness to the inequality before I slink back to my middle-class retirement lifestyle. It's not much, but it's all I have. The simple fact is: sometimes hard work and superior effort is met only with superior exhaustion.
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