By Judy Loving | Photo courtesy of Judy Loving
The only way to explore new waters and new winds, and arrive at new shores is to untie your lines and cast off.
For most of us, the aging process and retirement arrive together on our doorstep. It is a grand opportunity to reassess; an opportunity to reinvent, to try again, to re-focus. Call it what you will, there is a chance this will be the most exhilarating step of all.
There is a spark, a flame, to the word “retirement.” The word evokes the endpoint to the humdrum of a forty- or fifty-year career. Even if that career was neither hum nor drum, even if it was a life of nonstop challenges or successes or inventions, retirement may still beckon as a cliff’s edge that begs to be explored. And as you crawl out to the promising precipice and contemplate peering down, there is always the question of whether there will be treasures below or a sea of skeletons from a thousand lemmings that have gone before.
There comes a time when we acknowledge that there are endeavors and skills we will never master because there just isn’t enough time left, or physical limitations preclude accomplishing a goal. This may be a time to grieve that loss—or to have faith that eternity is really eternal; and that perhaps the opportunity to learn to sing, build a canoe, fly an airplane, or climb a summit will circle around again in some form or fashion.
There may loom a degree of trepidation. There is more than a hint of doom. If this is the next to the last step of life, what is the last step? And if we can avoid this step, then maybe we can deny the existence of a last step.
If aging slows us and retirement threatens to steal our sense of purpose, then it becomes reasonable to not change course. Our habits and routines have brought us this far with a certain degree of comfort and success. Indeed, why change? Focus on future time here, not age.
From a nautical sense, shunning the thought of retirement is the equivalent of hanging on to the current dock and not contemplating setting sail into unknown waters, bound for unknown lands. However, the only way to explore new waters and new winds, and arrive at new shores is to untie your lines and cast off. Vessels are meant to sail. Vessels are meant to embark on journeys, to venture into waves and weather, to brave both storms and calm seas. And leaving the security of your dock implies great change.
Change carries with it the assumption of risk. As frightening as the risk may be, clearly it is inhabited to a large degree with a sense of hope. When you accept risk, you are concurrently anticipating an optimistic future; an outcome that is better than today.
When you open to the risk and let go of the pier, either through a carefully executed float-plan or by way of unbridled curiosity, courage and a fullness of hope shine. You open to a chance to make things better, to make your life better. It is even a chance “to make life less difficult for others.” (George Eliot) That may truly be why we are here.
The retirement journey gives sixty-somethings and seventy-somethings a chance to develop talents they have only dreamed of. Retirement grants time to join volunteer groups, to start a new career, to turn a hobby or a dream into a full-time pursuit, or to help friends, neighbors, and family in ways that we never could because of work responsibilities. Now there is time and energy for involvement in community activities or to take on a cause. It is invigorating to rededicate to values and to fully live with an authenticity that may have been lost while life happened.
Making time for introspection is a worthwhile pursuit throughout life, of course, but on the cusp of retirement, introspection becomes vital. Even for those who are resolved to die at their desks, carefully weighing all facets of retirement and the retirement process is still very important. At the very least, unforeseen health events can happen at any moment to you or your loved ones, and the odds increase with time. Once health becomes an issue, the luxury of time for contemplative insight is rare. Possibilities are lost simply because you haven’t ever taken the time to think about them.
American author and activist Letty Cottin Pogrebin looks at life through an insightful lens. She stated, “I can’t do anything about the length of my life, but I can do something about its width and its depth.”
I often think that women have an easier time with retirement than men do. Women seem more prepared to accept the risk and try on a different persona. Perhaps it is because the physical changes throughout their lives have been more pronounced—puberty, childbearing, menopause. Women are more accustomed to working through great change. They understand change’s unintended consequences. They have fewer qualms about taking that first bite of the apple. M! June/July 2014
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