What it Means to Retire

So you work all your life long doing something… anything… to earn a living because you want to have  shelter for yourself and your family and you want food, transportation, education, entertainment, clothes and underwear… whatever you can afford that brings joy and comfort.

And then one day, after you have devoted 30 years or so to what you called your career, you stop doing it.  You retire. You are older and getting tired.  Maybe your brain is not as quick, and your work is driving you a little crazy.  You decide it’s just time to stop and focus on what’s left for you in the limited time of life you have left.

So one morning you stay in bed and don’t go back to work.  You get up when you feel like it and hang around the kitchen in your pajamas.  You make coffee, read the newspaper, feed the birds and water the plants.  You hang out on Facebook for a while and read your email.  It’s January and it’s really cold outside so you stay inside, take the thermometer off shutdown, put it on 67 degrees and watch a movie on cable TV.

After a few days of this routine, (or maybe it’s not a routine yet), you begin to feel like you have lost something.  It’s not the keys to the car.  It’s the people you used to work with. It’s the chair you sat in for hours at a time, and the desk on which you used to manage your work.  It’s the window you looked out over someone’s garage, and that pesky little brown bat that used to fly around the library and scare the wits out of you.  It’s also a little part of who you used to be, your identity.  We all know we are “not what we do” but there is something missing because you don’t do it anymore.  So you begin to think… well who am I now?

This question may take another few months to answer because things just seem more clear as time goes by.  Or maybe it will take longer to figure out just who you are now, and what your new position in life will be. Maybe you won’t ever have an answer to that question you were asked back in 9^th grade English class…  Who am I?  But it’s okay not knowing because in the long (or short) run, it’s all about the journey… the journey that is your lifetime. 

And that’s what it means to retire.