Part One
“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of
their dreams.”
Section 1
Age is
a fundamental law of life.
You have aged, just as you are aging and as will continue
to age. Perhaps not a pleasing fact, but one we have to look dead in the eye;
we will suffer a degree of pain, and isolation. Our bodies will become
sluggish, our skills less sharp, and - in case there’s any doubt - our lives will come to an end.
Take just a second, Imagine that as you die you
reflect upon, or confront, the story of your life. It would be, one would hope,
a story that we would be happy for our children and grandchildren to tell well
into the future. This book is about creating that story.
And imagine, if you can, what it would be like
to think your final thoughts. It
would not be, one would hope, a vicious piece of gossip, a concern about
finances or a worry about social status. If able to really put ourselves into
the seriousness demanded of that moment, there would probably be one or two
thoughts worth having, and hopefully no regrets - no unexpressed guilt,
gratitude or love.
This is also a book about wiping that slate
clean, so that ‘the final thought’ can be unpolluted by nonsense, noise and
ego…leaving the world without regrets.
Although that was a rather morbid introduction,
this is a book about living.
Living,
as opposed to winding down, closing up, stepping back, or switching off.
Retirement
is not what it once was. Every day medical
researchers from all around the world push themselves to raise the ceiling of
our life expectancies, our levels of comfort, and our capacity to act. People are
living longer, and are active longer.[1, 2, 3]
These days ‘Retirement’ almost seems to be the wrong word, given that it can account for quarter
of your life. At the age of 65, it is predicted that we have another 20 years
in us! [2,]It’s
even possible, if you retire early and live a long life that retirement can
take up half of your years on this
planet!
So, lifespan has increased, but has life-style adapted?
No. In most cases, not yet.
What’s more is modern freedom; The freedom to work
as we please, where we please, and if
we please - the freedom to learn for free, in the convenience of our own homes,
that for which only decades ago you would have needed a pricy teacher. Work and information are there to pick up
and to put down as we please, today there are online teaching programs,
architects can design houses online and so forth. In a sense, you are the
current result of the path human civilisation has taken. Centuries of work and
progress have resulted in whatever health and freedom you now have. We have
now, unique to history, the opportunity to become what we dream of becoming.
Even the strictest of pessimists has to agree with that:
Nobody
has lived in a world as modern as the one you live in today.
And here’s the hypothesis this book aims to
explore:
Nobody
before us has had the same luxury of freedom as we have today.
The question is: How are you going to make
the most of it?
The Question:
Have I done my best to make
use of the freedom and opportunity that retirement brings?
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What
This Guide Covers
I’ve heard it said (I’m afraid I can’t remember
where) that many motivational books and speeches do have a significant
short-term effect on their audiences, but that people essentially need ‘topping
up’ with optimism after this wears off.
Our goal is quite different - We don’t aim to
motivate you through emotive, but ultimately content-less language, but rather
to present a series of facts and findings that hopefully allow you to come to
the same conclusions that we have - That retirement can be the beginning of
something hugely satisfying.
Alongside our general points we have created
some ‘case-studies.’ These can’t exactly be called fictional or nonfictional,
as they are a collage of real people and problems, ‘tuned-up’ in order to bring out their emotional context –
normally, anecdotal evidence carries no persuasive heft, and those who prefer
cold statistics just roll their eyes; we
make no claim to objectivity in these sections.
Such anecdotes, in giving a human face to the
issues, will hopefully help you empathise with them. But it’s important, as you
read this book that you pause and
imagine the emotions such events and actions would cause in your own life.
In structuring this guide, we faced a question
of balance: how could we write a guide that doesn’t shy away from certain dark realities,
that doesn’t patronize our readers by sugar-coating them, but also ultimately
leaves them with a grounded optimism?
With that in mind, this guide or at least
sections of it should be visualized as a journey into a dark forest, which
although daunting, does indeed have an exit.
So, if you are to accompany us any further,
please make sure to push through to the other side…!
In reading this guide,
am I prepared to do my best to consider both the upsides and downsides of
retirement, so I make the very best of the upsides and minimise the risks of
the downsides?
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If You Only Read One Page of this
Guide…
Have a plan.
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And
make it brave.
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Confront hard truths.
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Your
debt will not disappear just because the bills do. Undiagnosed problems are
uncontrollable problems.
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Expect Hiccups.
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The
timing and manner in which you retire may not go as planned -
don’t let it get to you.
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Delay nothing.
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Get started.
It’s never too late. (Until it is.)
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Maintain balance and stability.
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These
are crucial to maintaining key functions in your day-to-day life and in giving
you full autonomy.
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Express what you want and need.
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Do
not assume others can read your mind. As we age, we have to become more
forthright and direct in communicating our difficulties.
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Have a simple story.
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One
that can easily convey your limitations to others, without causing heartache
and concern each and every time.
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Ask yourself daily questions.
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Stay
on track. (We have a list of these in many sections of this book.)
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Make the most of helpers
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Accountants,
doctors, personal trainers, coaches. These are people there to help you be
the best you can be.
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Automate as much as you can.
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Take
things off of your mind. Fall asleep each night without the weight of having
to do something the next morning.
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Find purpose.
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In
whatever way it’s meaningful to you, personally, find the thing that gets you
out of bed.
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Stay engaged, active and connected.
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Keep
the skills you have spent a life honing. Share. Interact. Give back.
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The
Question:
If you only read one
page of this guide, will you do your best to implement one item that would
help you and those closest to you benefit from your retirement?
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The
Push and Pull
‘I have never liked working. To me a job is an invasion of
privacy.’
Approaching retirement is a tumultuous time in
our lives. It’s perfectly natural to feel a mixture of emotions at this stage -
and not all positive!
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the biggest push into retirement is job
dissatisfaction [4], but more than
this, it is a lack of engagement. [5]
There’s the double-edged sword of seniority - the
most senior members, being the most experienced, are more prone to feeling
undervalued, but also more capable of sensing when other members of the team
are guilty of poor reasoning.
Along with any growing resentment
a dangerous thought gradually creeps in:
The biggest pull into retirement is marriage
satisfaction. There’s an old joke of a wife, on hearing her husband has chosen
to retire, saying, ‘I said I’d stand by
you for better or for worse - not hanging about in your pyjamas.’
And also health - retirees have more time to
invest in their own health
As I move into
requirement, will I do my best to learn from and forgive whatever pushed me
into retirement and celebrate and build on what pulled me into retirement?
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(Mis)conceptions
of Aging
Is retirement the ‘winter’ of your life?
The freedom to invest in:
In the next section we will see some
individuals who had the audacity to break some of those rules - The Exceptions.
They show us that if retirement truly is the winter
of your life, let’s not forget about Christmas and snowball fights!
The
Question:
Will you do your best
to find a purpose, big or small, that will motivate and fulfil you throughout
retirement?
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A
Questionnaire
Give yourself a score from 1-10 on each of the
following areas, 1 meaning that you’re rock-bottom hopeless, and 10 meaning you’re
a master of the area, someone we should all go to for help of the subject:
Area
|
Score
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Your sense of purpose in life
|
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Your sense of identity
|
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Your sense of autonomy
|
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Your health (overall)
And specifically on
●
Your
cardiovascular capacity
●
Your
weight
●
Your
mobility; ease of movement.
|
|
Your level of stress
|
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Your quality of sleep
|
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Your satisfaction with your everyday
environment
|
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Your feeling of accomplishment.
|
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Your satisfaction in your hobbies
|
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Your confidence in your financial situation
And specifically on
●
Your
spending
●
Your
saving
●
Your
ability (or willingness) to pick up more work if needed
|
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Your confidence your social skills
|
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Your sense of connection to those important
to you (children/grandchildren/partner/friends)
|
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Your confidence that you yourself, or those
around you, would react quickly and responsibly in an emergency.
|
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Exceptions
Nowadays exceptions to the trends are not hard
to find.
The most immediate to hand is that despite both being past the age of
retirement, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump fought it out over the
position of President of the United
States - the most powerful,
responsible position on the planet.
And there are no shortage of rock stars who,
despite having abused their bodies for decades, still live their lives to the
fullest whilst pushing eighty.
(Recently, Mick Jagger has had his eighth child, despite being 72 - not that
this is really advisable.)
But let’s have a look at some of the greats - and
of course, maybe you’re not quite in the triple digits yourself, but what
inspiring precedents they set!
Yuichiro Miura
|
Holds
the record for being the oldest man to climb Everest, at 80.
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Jeanna Clement
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The
oldest verified human being (despite being a smoker from the age of 21 until 117!).
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Dorothy Davenhill Hirsch
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Travelled
to the North Pole, despite being 89.
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Doris Self
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Competed
in video game competitions until she was 80.
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George Weiss
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At 84,
invented the game Dabble.
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Hikekichi Miyazaki
|
On
the day after he turned 105, ran
100m in just over 42 seconds.
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Doris Haddock
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Between
the ages of 88-90, walked across
the United States.
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E. Bruce Heilmann
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87, travelled 10,000 miles by
Harley-Davidson.
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Frank Shearer,
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100, loves water-skiing.
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Irving Berlin
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Was 95 years old when his single ‘Puttin’ on the Ritz’ got into the
top ten.
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Johanna Quas
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The
world’s oldest gymnast at 86, having
picked it back up when she was 57.
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Don Pellman,
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100, has set five track and
field records.
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Madeleine Scott
|
Started
teaching at 40 but continued until 100. When asked about retirement she
simply said: ‘Oh, that’s a bad word….’
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The point of all of these examples is that,
although there are general rules to aging, there are people who refuse its terms, whether due to
passion or just some automatic compulsion of theirs.
So, before you resign to an armchair and pipe,
consider the fact:
You could still show us
what is possible.
The
Question:
Am I going to do my
best to find some role models that will guide me in my retirement? (They may,
of course, be very individual and different to the role models others
choose.)
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This is the continuation of a weekly serialization of this new ebook on active retirement, by Wamala and Cooper, which book is available through amazon.com for $0.99:
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