Friday, May 2, 2008

Task 5: Is There Any Specific Retirement Age?

Talking about the retirement age is somewhat like putting away a part of a person’s life. This happens especially for employees, who have been doing their job for a certain period of time. Basically thinking, the main idea of retirement is to make regeneration in a company. At the time a person gets retire, there will be another younger person replacing his/her position. But the problem comes up when we talk about the perfect time for a person to retire from his job.

There are many retirement ages have been implanted, some says around 50s old while others say it’s not a matter for a person to work until the age of 70s. Here in Indonesia, government stated that people should get retire at the age of 55. Meanwhile, some decision makers in the cabinet still own their jobs until the age of 70 or more. For the example, Indonesian former president, Soeharto, who still lead this nation even he had reached retirement age.

For me, there’s no specific retirement time, as long as the workers still have an abilities and capabilities for doing their jobs. We cannot say that an old man cannot contribute for future, as C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) said, “The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.

The thing we should concern about is not when we should retire, but to think what we can do in every minute of our lives, no matter in what age we are. A famous businessman, Donald Trump, once said, “You have to think anyway, so why not think big?” In doing our job, we have to think the goal. Think the big goals to reach and priorities to reach our goals. After that, we have to define actions to express our priorities, like Mohandas Gandhi told.

Since everything is based on our minds, we have to keep saying, “If we think we can, we can.”

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