All work and no play makes jack a dull boy.
[ the above video is an excerpt about retirement, from a longer animation. Brilliant, well worth the watch - Retirement Plan. Find my own similar poetic waxing at the end of today’s naked and alive ramble. ]
I have never bought into the notion of “retirement”. You know, the cultural concept that at some uncertain date in the future, you’ll stop working, stop doing what you’ve normally done and then be “free” to do whatever your heart desires.
It’s problematic on so many levels. Here are just a few reasons I think why.
There is no solid finish line. Your finish line could be tomorrow, it might be never (though the odds aren’t good). Your D-Day is an indiscoverable secret. What happens if you work hard, save and then at the age of 44 are told you have cancer and 3 months to live? Or good forbid - you just get hit by a bus.
"We create our fate. Forget, forgive, renounce, abdicate and scrap the past instantly. Live the good life instantly; it's now or never, and always has been." Henry Miller
Our lives teach us who we are. Let’s be honest. If you live your whole life postponing “living authentically” (that’s the deal with the retirement concept) and stuffing money into a house or bank account for later use - you will experience Stockholm Syndrome. You can’t escape it. That life you’ve lived will be full of inertia, you’ll never be able to shake it. Sure, you might retire according to the literal definition but you sure as hell won’t be able to enjoy it - having become a trained seal, in need of daily 9-5 validation.
Escatological thinking. Thinking about a future “end” is not living life here and now. We imagine retirement as a religious fundamentalist does paradise/heaven. It’s full of virgins, sweet times, no problems or worries. Nirvana. Sorry to tell you Dorothy, there ain’t no Oz. Retirement comes with the same amount of stress, terror and angst as the regular day to day of the life lived before.
I do realize there is a lot of gray involved in the concept and the “doing” of retirment. We all need to work, pay bills, having things, build a life and that takes some compromises, actually many of them. I guess the best we can ask for is some kind of permanent “semi-retirement”. P.S. Why isn’t that happening? With all the modern claims of progress and life improvement?
But too often, I’ve seen with my friends, my family — too much of their authentic life and experience being postponed. And on top of that comes the sad rationalization of it all - “It wasn’t so bad”, “I had some enjoyable times.” It’s how we survive a life filled with regrets, “I wish I’d done this. I wish I’d done that.” The fact is - too many are locked into living a life they never planned on when they first set off from the start line.
To end, I’d like to add that the “retirement trap” is NOT primarily the fault of YOU, the individual and your own life choices - though some want you to believe it so. That’s the neo-liberal con and lie - putting blame for all forms of societal suffering onto the individual when in fact, there are large structural, political, legal, cultural and economic “rules” keeping most swimming upstream in the retirement river. But I’ll leave this topic for a future post and fuller accounting - it’s an important concept for anyone wanting to “live in freedom”, to understand. IMHO.
When I Retire
When I retire
I’m out of here!
I’m gonna hop on my bike
and turn north, head south.
I’m gonna lay my head on
mother earth’s warm bossom
and sing myself to sleep each night,
the next day rolling along nowwhere in particular
singin songs that only I know the words to.
When I retire
I’m gonna get a dog and
sit with her in the park
spending my afternoons
feeding pigeons and solving
imaginary problems in my mind
while watching stiff legged legionnaires
march off to their lofty battle stations.
When I retire
I’m gonna turn off the machine and
give AI the middle finger and
decide for myself what is true or not.
I’m gonna speak my mind
and spot and call out every idiot
in every “living” room.
When I retire
I’m gonna write a novel and finally
get my poetry collected into one place
and I’ll spend my days reading them
to all the stray animals gathered
in my sunny yard.
When I retire
I will sleep like a baby and
snore like a lion and
burp, fart, shit and
stink like a savage,
though I’ll
dress up once in a while
just for the heck of it
and because I can.
Not gonna cut my eyebrows either.
Fact is …
when I retire
I’m going to do
exactly the same
as I’ve just about always done
but maybe with a little more
pizzaz and piss and vinegar-
here, now
naked and alive
scratchin’ out a livin’
in this chicken coup of time.
