Retirement: life’s best part
The first part of life has unique joys and senses of accomplishment. It’s filled with nonstop, evolving activities of education, finding a partner and raising a family, and building a career to support physical wants and needs. But the good times can be blunted by existential angst over differing sorts of competition and social, political, career and work-site discord and intrigues.
During that time it’s tempting to occasionally fantasize leaving it all behind to luxuriate in retirement’s freedom and more relaxed pace. But dreamers are unaware that, before they can realize retirement’s rewards, they’ll have to accomplish the confounding task of personal transformation.
Jerry, a casual friend who retired a few months ago from a successful commercial real estate career told me he still meets with his buddies every day at 7AM. After that the days get really long.
His skills in salesmanship and closing deals are neither appropriate or adequate for successfully navigating life’s second half. While adjusting to deteriorating physical and mental skills, he’ll have to cope with life’s twists and turns that may impose irreversible consequences on him. He can’t buy or sell his way out of that situation.
Along with living on pins and needles, his greatest challenge will be finding meaning. Meaning expresses itself as reasons for continuing to live.
Meaning is the soul-renewing force that provides contentment, a feeling of belonging, of being at home in the human family. It satisfies the last half of life’s ultimate goal of making peace with life and preparing for death.
The hunger for meaning is insatiable. Inertia, anxiety over the future, depression and despondency and being negative or hyper critical are spiritually draining. Jerry’s restlessness over his long days is a message from his soul telling him to make something out of his new life.
The quest for second-half meaning flows naturally from the first half’s experiences and interests. By retirement some passions have run their courses. Others await opportunities to bloom. And potential others are nascent ideas waiting to be discovered and developed.
Despite its potential physical limitations, the second half affords opportunities to explore life’s mysteries, with child-like trial and error, while searching for fulfillment and pleasure.
One source of accomplishment comes with fulfilling our natural desire to leave our descendants with a better world. We can’t repay our ancestors for the benefits we received from their investments and sacrifices but we can pay what amounts to a social debt forward by investing in the future.
The concept of paying forward is a human natural trait traceable back to a Greek drama in 317 BC. In a 1784 letter, Benjamin Franklin explained that he had made a loan, not given a gift to the recipient. The debt was to be repaid by passing its benefits on to others. Today the nonprofit Pay It Forward Foundation has distributed over a million pay-it-forward bracelets in 100 countries.
On retirement, my parents watched their friends gradually decline in health and abilities.The expectation was that the elderly would became disabled and despondent and finally welcome death as a relief from life’s suffering.
Our generation has been gifted with better health, fewer incapacities and longer lives. We can pay our debt forward by creating a model of successful aging and better preparation for death for our descendants.
Thanks,Jim. A wonderful exploration of the stage Erikson labeled with the challenge of integrity. In its absence, only despair.