“Inside of every 80 year old man is an 8 year old kid wondering what the hell has happened to them!”
– Paraphrasing Terry Pratchett
It struck me recently that I am now at the part of my life where I am literally waiting to die. Not in the sense that I have a terminal illness (unless you want to classify life as a terminal illness for everyone), but rather that what had previously defined my life, work, was no longer driving my daily routine with my recent retirement.
My life, as with most people who have lived this long, has fallen into 4 phases:
Phase 1 – Childhood & Education: My time at home and school before I branched out on my own.
Phase 2 – Work & Family: Advancing my career and building a family.
Phase 3 – Master of the Universe: The peak of my career successes, with family mainly out of the house.
Phase 4 – Retirement: Stepping over the edge of the cliff. Watch out for the step; the transition from Phase 3 to 4 is a doozy, as I have discovered.
What I am doing in my Phase 4 is giving back as best I can to the world in general – in part through this blog. To use my remaining time for nothing more than Pickle Ball seems a waste of the opportunity I have to concentrate on something other than work for once.
What has helped my transition from the working world is the time I have put into understanding and applying Stoic principles over the past decade. Without this, I think I would have been lost without the constant feedback and interaction that was typical in my prior career.
I think this is why, for so many, retirement is not a time of contentment, but rather a rapid descent into the grave. Without the external validation they were so used to, to be left now with the deafening silence of retirement is too much for their ego. They have lost touch with who they are without their career to constantly validate their self-image, and they now have little to fall back on, especially if they are lacking close friends or family.
Focusing on developing myself and my character has been a lifelong journey that I will never complete. There is no goal; I will never be a Stoic Sage, but that does not mean that I cannot work every day to get a little bit closer to that objective. And by making these advances, I am giving my life purpose, and I feel, helping make my world a better place for those I love and live with.
My life is what I make of it. While I have time left, I will do what I can to try and not waste the opportunity I have been given. Everyone, retired or not, should do the same to not waste the time they have been given – no one knows how short or long that may be.