An updated ant and cricket fable

Having now retired from regular service my friend Barney has been on the lookout for casual work of any kind. “Anything that will get me out of the house,” he informs the lady at the work-placement kiosk set up at the local mall.

Apparently the government is initiating a drive to help some people get back into the workforce if they’ve been experiencing difficulties of one kind or another; rehabilitate them. This includes retirees who may still feel up to a spot of casual working.

“I’m going to give this a shot, Kev,” Barney informs me, making a beeline for the woman at the work stall.

“Trying to get away from the Mrs? Or the children?” jokes the lady — an elderly matronly type — handing Barney a very brief form to fill out with personal details. “Now, now, you’re not going to get a peep out of me on that score,” he jokes back.

Once the preliminary Aussie banter has been dispensed with the employment lady tells Barney he’d first have to prove he has some disability, even a minor one. Does he have one?

Barney looks doubtful, searching his mind, searching his medical history. “Nothing,” he confesses.

“What about anxiety? We can help you if your doctor can give a certificate saying you’re anxiety prone.”

Off goes Barney, with me in tow, to see the doctor who is just around the corner. Once there, as he tells me later, he forces himself to invent a dire scenario one in which his financial condition is on the brink and is driving him to the edge and how if he doesn’t find work soon both he and his bank details may soon go over.

Questionnaire

The doctor (who must have been given this scenario a thousand times) hands Barney a questionnaire. Fifteen questions that he has to grade from one to five. Each question seeks to learn a little more about his mental state — is he depressed, does he suffer mood swings, does he experience feelings of worthlessness? “By the time I’d finished I felt I’d done a pretty convincing job, Kev,” he said, later.

The doctor must have thought so, too, for he told Barney, “In evaluating your score, you have a 43 out of a possible 50. Now this qualifies you for some discounted psychological evaluation.” Whereupon the doctor proceeded to write out a reference to the psychologist attached to the clinic.

“Go there, put it all on the table,” instructed the doctor encouragingly.

“Right, so will you give me a letter as well?” asks Barney, a request that the doctor declines stating that he first has to have the psychologist’s record to guide him.

“I thought you’d been looking forward to a life of retirement,” I ask Barney later. “Isn’t this why you slaved away in the working years? So that you could put your feet up now, relax a bit? Why do you want to go back to work? Tired of retirement already?”

“Which question do you want me to answer first?” he says, in reply.

Then, in a touch that’s rather un-Barney-like he confesses, “All my working life I think I’ve played the part of the cricket, if you remember the fable about the ant and the cricket. I wasn’t into setting aside for the future. I’d always been taught to live in the present. And so I chirruped my way through the work days, chirruped my way through jobs. Not many around who’d have held more varied jobs than yours truly here. From CEO to dishwasher and kitchen hand. The entire range. Trips around the world with the wife. Bali, Phuket, Bangkok.”

And now this self-confessed ‘cricket’ — of healthy body and almost certainly healthy but incredibly mischievous mind - must invent another fable about itself, proclaiming that living in the present has brought about endless anxiety when for decades the ‘cricket’ ought to have been living in the future in order to feel safe in the ‘retired present’. That’s life!

Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.