AS I SEE IT
MARIANNE HERON
Knowing when to quit can be a tricky issue. When it comes to retirement the decision is made for many of us. But suppose you aren’t tied by contract or regulation can you judge the right time to let go the reins or make an appropriate change? It’s a question that came up several times this month.
It arose for Joe Biden when he was shafted by special counsel Robert Hurt who played on concerns over President Biden’s age, damning him with faint praise him as “a well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory”, having cleared him of illegally keeping classified documents at his home. Republican Hurt certainly saw his opportunity to injure Biden’s bid for a second term as president, following the president’s failure to recall key dates during a five- hour interview at a time when Biden was in the midst of tense negotiations to stop the Israelis’ carnage of Palestinians in Gaza.
Before anyone out there decides that they are over the hill because they have done a ‘Biden’ and been unable to recall a date or mixed up names, keep calm and carry on. These slips are not a sign that you are losing your marbles or that you are suffering from some form of dementia.
Age-associated memory impairment is something that happens to us as we get on in years. This is perfectly normal; brains are like computers with overload, they slow up when filled with information and that forgotten name or date will be recalled later, probably in the middle of the night.
Dismissing older people as past it and doddery is ageist, elders have plenty of positive advantages: with wisdom and better. crystalline intelligence on their side and there are stalwart examples of older heads of state from Nelson Mandela who became President of South Africa aged 77 to Queen Elizabeth and our own Michael D.
Whether Biden has the stamina to cope with four years in the most demanding job in the world by which time he will be 85 is another question particularly at a critical time in world affairs . Personally, I would rather have a man who has helped steer the US economy back on course with 3% growth rate than Donald Trump, four years Biden’s junior, who passes truth by on the other side of the road as though it were a threatening stranger and who incites Putin to attack NATO members who don’t pay their arms dues (the US produces over a third of the world’s $100 billion arms trade), Never mind the numerous legal cases against him for everything from four criminal cases in four states to the case in Colorado barring him from running for election on grounds of inciting insurrection.
Why do individuals choose to stay on in positions of power? Is it from self-interest or altruism for the good of the nation? It seems Joe Biden believes that he is the only candidate that can beat Trump.
King Charles’ recent diagnosis with an unspecified form of cancer raises questions about his future too. Should he stay on as monarch, demonstrating that it is possible to live and rule with cancer, or should he abdicate in favour of Price William rather than leave him as king in waiting as he himself was for so many decades and enjoy a less stressful lifestyle to benefit his recovery? Perhaps the latter choice might be more likely to shore up the future of the British monarchy. Charles and Camilla are nowhere near as popular as the late Queen Elizabeth.
Then there is a more personal everyday question of letting go. Not for the first time the Government have urged older people to move, downsize and give up their family homes. As a means to solve the housing crisis, which is of successive governments’ own making, and, as a way to make older people feel guilty, I find this unacceptable.
Fine for those who want to move but for others their family homes may be the biggest financial investment of their lives: much- loved places where they have memories, friends, neighbours and services. Quite aside from the fact that that it costs money to move, smaller homes are relatively expensive, few and far between and grown-up children may still be living with their parents as they are unable to get started on the housing ladder or afford stratospheric rents.
Downsizing should be a matter of individual choice, I’ll move if I am ready and not before.
