Just got back from my latest surgery, it went fine. The staff were nice, ones I hadn't seen before. Although I got the dreaded question, "So what do you do?" And had to say "Nothing at the moment," and then justify it by explaining all my health issues, but these were some of the rare people who accepted I couldn't be expected to work in my condition instead of being judgmental about it. Although they did do the whole "You'll get better soon," thing, and imply that I can get back to work eventually. Why is our society like this? No matter how insurmountable your health issues society can never just accept that you're on the scrapheap, work-wise. There always has to be some undercurrent of "You should be working." Hence why even people with degenerative conditions get re-assessed for disability benefits again and again instead of being left in peace.
And don't even get me started on "So what do you do" being the standard conversation opener for everyone, everywhere, always. Always immediately judging and classifying someone by their job. Are we really so unimaginative that we can't think of another way to start a conversation with a stranger? How about "So what music do you like? Been anywhere nice lately? What's your favourite film?" I mean, literally anything that is about an individual's personal interests rather than how productive they are to capitalism and where they fit on the job-based social respect scale.
People who get full time jobs stop having 80% of their free time, which is instead sold to capital. They seem boring and focused on work, because work is all they have.
I remember a news article years ago about a poor elderly couple who worked in a supermarket. They won millions on the lottery..... and kept their jobs. They said the work helped pass the time and all their friends worked there too. I just thought, how sad. You could do anything with that money but you can't think of anything else to do except stack the shelves and sweep the floors in the same place you've been doing for decades.
This is definitely going to be a diagnosable mental illness after the revolution. The treatment would include a forced vacation, and something like a job fair but for hobbies.
SRSLY Wrong has a great bit in one of their life after Utopia episodes about the need for authoritarian vacation police who force you to take time off work and spend it doing leisure activities
So many of the old people in my life are miserable because they don't have hobbies, or at the very least didn't keep doing them once it got a bit difficult.