One Hundred Days

 

This is the one-hundredth posting to my blog, and not coincidentally I’m writing it on the one-hundredth day of my retirement.

Since we measure U.S. presidents by the accomplishments of their first one hundred days in office, I thought it fair to assess myself by the same standard.  What have I accomplished in all that time now that an employer isn’t taking 8+ hours of each day, Monday through Friday, not to mention a hefty portion of my emotional energy?

And right away you capture a glimpse of how I’ve been treating retirement: I measure it in “accomplishments”.  Is that fair?  Should retirement be the final goal, the crowning achievement, the culmination of all you’ve done previously, so now you can relax and do as you please since there is nothing left to accomplish?

Just from the way I phrased that question I think you can guess my answer. 

Perhaps I’ve not read the right journals or online magazines, but it seems that for every 40 or 50 articles about how to save and prepare financially for retirement, there’s only one addressing the emotional aspects of retirement; how to replace the fulfillment achieved at work (assuming you felt fulfilled!); how to maintain friendships outside the work world; how not to fall victim to gray divorce, i.e. divorce after age 55 which is happening to more and more people as they struggle to cope with the post-work world, perhaps complicated by spending more time with their spouse than they ever have before.  While financial preparation for retirement is crucial, money does not equal happiness.  Money does help to facilitate experiences and provide for our basic comfort, and those do offer a measure of happiness.  But money without relationships and life purpose will not be worth much.

The single best retirement advice I read was “You should retire TO something and not FROM something.”  In other words, there needs to be a new purpose, a new organizing principle to the retiree’s life (if it wasn’t there already).  As beings in God’s image, we should be growing and learning and serving constantly.  Think back to your last big vacation.  Didn’t you find that the anticipation was as exciting or even more so than the vacation itself?  If we treat retirement as “the end”, think that there’s nothing more to accomplish or learn, we will stagnate and even die before our time.

That is not to say you do not deserve some leisure time, some relaxation.  You earned it.  But your purpose might be discovered and fulfilled in volunteering, giving, helping neighbors, church work, even hobbies.  There are as many paths to fulfillment as there are retirees.  We were made that way.

Until next time,

Roger

“Here and now, my dear friends, we are God’s children.  We don’t know what we shall become in the future.  We only know that when He appears we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is!”   I John 3:2 (Phillips)