But is your heart really in it?
Back in the day I had an activity planned for almost every moment of practically every day. And I usually had something ready to take up the slack in case there was a change. In those days I prided myself on being flexible and able to adjust on the fly.
But I occasionally fantasized a not-too-serious something happening to clear the decks so I could pause, take a deep breath and reflect on life and the direction I was heading. Too often I was going through the motions of fulfilling my agendas, but my heart wasn’t really in what I was doing. I had a constant nagging feeling that things weren’t quite right.
Remembering those times, I reflected on an experience in pharmacy school with George Wells, a professor who had a profound effect on my life. Moderately obese, with perfect posture, George was an imposing figure with a reputation for being picky and stern. A fly fisherman, he wasn’t the kind of guy you’d choose to go on a fishing trip with.
After my sophomore year, when I was very active in campus activities, I had only slightly above average grades. i took George’s Bacteriology class that included handling some potentially dangerous disease-causing bacteria such as Typhoid Fever and Tuberculosis.
Every student was given a job to help keep the lab clean and safe. George knew I was thinking about medical school and that I was overbooking myself with activities. Before assigning my lab job, he took me aside and said he knew I was constantly thinking about one thing while doing another. Multitasking in today’s parlance.
Instead of giving me a small lab job like the others, he assigned me the task of seeing that everyone else did their job satisfactorily. Showing up wasn’t enough. I had to be fully engaged in what I was doing. If someone didn’t do their job right, and I didn’t fix it, I was the one who would be downgraded. I liked him as a teacher, took his advice to heart, and did much better academically from then on.
These days I still have to be on guard against the temptation of trying to do too much. Some consider multitasking a badge of honor. I see it as not being fully focused on anything. Even if it could be continuously, successfully done, it probably wouldn’t lead to an overall satisfying lifestyle.
Last summer I volunteered at a music competition for select college and high school tuba and euphonium players. I had the good fortune of having breakfast and visiting a few more times with Rex Martin, low brass professor at Northwestern University.
Even though I am old enough to be his father, we were both raised in tiny farm towns and personally hit it off immediately. Professionals at his level are overachievers. He’s also obviously in good physical condition with tanned arms and white wrists and hands from wearing gloves on long distance bicycle rides.
I learned that he was on his way home from an overseas multi-week tour and hadn’t been to bed for two days. He had an overflow summer schedule of featured performances and clinics at events like the competition.
Listening to his story, I felt a bit sad. I wondered who is in charge of his life. Is it a booking agent? Like assembly-line workers who are physical-labor commodities, it seemed that he was a commodity of the elite professional music world. He was exchanging his summer time off for being featured at world-wide prestigious music events. When he can’t or is no longer willing to continue this summer’s rigor someone else will take his place as that commodity.
Almost reflexively, I asked him how satisfied and content he was with his life. He paused and said he didn’t know. He’d never asked himself that. People ask him to go places and do things professionally and he goes. It almost seemed like if this is August 15th, I’m at Blue Lake.
I can see how he gets a great deal of professional satisfaction from his career. Along with his other duties, he gave a stunning recital. I’d never heard better tone from a tuba. But I don’t see how he could be fully engaged personally in his peripatetic summer. There wasn’t even time for sleep, let alone personal reflection.
Success in the work-a-day world merely requires showing up for work and satisfying your employers. But successful retirement is more complicated. It requires listening skills and willingness to share experiences, feelings, interests and life’s unfolding physical, emotional and mental changes with others.
In other words, it requires putting your heart fully into it.
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