Midlife Unemployment Crisis

Last fall, I found myself joining the ranks of the gainfully unemployed. The company wide layoffs were due to an acquisition by a bigger company and I was part of the workforce reduction plan. As an adventurous and happy-go-lucky person at heart, i took the news with some apparently unusual glee and excitement about what the future would hold for me. I had spent ten very satisfying and edifying years with the company and i was ready to embark on a new adventure. It was comforting that my ten years of employment at my previous post afforded me with a steady severance check for a few weeks, so i bounced out of the door with skip in my step and a cheery disposition. 


I felt utterly confident that another job would not be far off and that with my wealth of experience, i would be able to land something even better for more money. This is what everybody kept telling me. "You are so knowledgable", "You have such a fantastic set of skills and so much experience", "You are a really fast learner and a hard worker" - all true statements, but something else that was also true was not being mentioned, namely that i am 50 years old. Our labor laws prevent candidates and employees from age discrimination but let's face facts, unlike recent college grads, we middle-aged geniuses only have another 15 years, at most, to contribute to the company. That is a valid consideration when calculating the cost of on-boarding and training a new employee. Also, with this many miles on the engine, it's a pretty fair expectation that something's going to start going either with the employee herself or their equally aged spouse. To assume that hiring managers don't consider these matters at all is a bit naïve.

So, what is one to do? How can you compete with inexorable advance of old age nipping at your heels?

Contributing to this angst is the expectation that one should have achieved a certain level of financial status and security by this age. It's the propaganda we were fed for decades, which led many to suspend all pleasures in the prime of life in order to ensure the blissful leisure in their golden years. Others made bargains with the devil and joined the ranks of mercenaries, doing whatever it takes to make the biggest bucks possible. It's hard to look at their security and not feel a little bit envious. After all, it's not as if i didn't work diligently at the jobs i was given to do or endeavor to acquire additional skills and knowledge. The difference is that i just couldn't get motivated enough about money to take the same steps as they did. Money to me is a necessary evil but nothing i have ever been able to chase or spend too much time thinking about. Spending time calculating retirement income & setting a career path accordingly stupefies me. And because i could never bring myself to charting my work-life this way, i am now wandering the wilderness without a clue about tomorrow. 

Every life has its own set of storms that buffet us to and fro, or even carry us far off course. Vile winds assault and ominous clouds obscure the sun. It's easy to become despondent & fearful. Storms are dangerous and sometimes deadly. Common sense dictates that storms are to be avoided at all costs because they can be so unpredictable and volatile. We devise ways to protect ourselves in and from storms. 
We buy insurance to protect our assets (money) from the ravages of disasters. We go to great lengths to account for and preserve ourselves from every possible calamity. Insurance companies create stunning profits from the business of fear. 
We expect perpetual sunshine and calm seas, and when this doesn't materialize, we demand restitution. Life must return to sunshine and calm seas as soon as possible and remain so, as long as possible. And yet, for so many, many people outside of our little circle of happy-happy-joy-joy, life is one relentless storm after another. It's grey skies most of the time with scant hope of sunshine. How do these people survive, much less thrive? Where does their hope and perseverance come from? How do they keep smiling and standing firm?

What we cannot see is their anchor beneath the waves. An anchor that holds them firmly and securely in spite of the surging waves. An anchor that can withstand any storm, lodged immovably in the bedrock, where all is peaceful and calm.


Without this, all the machinations and strategies are but flimsy floatation devices that we clutch on to for dear life. We spot someone with a slightly bigger and more secure looking life-preserver, and we decide that if we can get one too then we will be alright...until we spot an even more amazing life-preserver. We carry these life-preservers around with us just in case we might need them, if and when the next storm hits. We figure out ways to make someone else pay for the life-preserver because they owe it to us. We turn vicious should anyone threaten to take away our life-preservers. Should the worst happen and we suddenly find ourselves bereft of a life-preserver, we are driven to edge of desperation and terror.

What do the anchor-people think about these floatation devices and our dependence on them? Diving a little deeper, is it possible that the anchor-people interpret and experience the storms differently than the floatation-people? What if we could learn to live through the storms like the anchor-people? Would it be possible for us to trade in our floatation devices for an anchor?


This is my real mission. This is my current job and it's going to be my career from now on.