Reflection

Did a lot of it today. 

Having been off work for a couple of weeks I’ve been thinking more and more about what it would be like to be properly retired: without paid employment, living off pensions and having more free time. It’s an interesting train of thought, one I’ve been coming back to every day in different forms. 

Today I decided that work is for lazy people. Work gives you structure, purpose, camaraderie. You avoid having to confront the reality of you own existence. There are few moments when you have to deal with the sheer terror of being alone with who you are and the real choices you might make if the world were different. Work takes away the big questions; it is like running on autopilot, worse in fact in that it gives you something to blame for at least two thirds of the stress, ills and diversions from realising your true potential.

When I was young a lot of people disliked Sundays for the same reason; it lengthened out drearily without the distraction of shopping and mass entertainment. You could go to the pub at lunchtime, eat a roast dinner, fall asleep in front of The Big Match. Then the wheels of time would grind more slowly as set bound tv productions of Charles Dickens took hold, followed by religious programmes and Songs of Praise. On a bad day the ghastly Malcolm Muggeridge would appear saying something like “this week we are going to talk about the nature of sin” illustrated with black and white engravings of people being tortured in hell. 

After that Monday was a welcome relief. Back to the routine, no more having to think about big issues simply because, for a few hours, distraction had been blown into the corners of your consciousness. The must do’s would come scurrying in to save you from yourself and your bleakest thoughts. Shirts to iron, bosses to please, kids to pick up from school, meals to cook. Television programmes dare not be missed; they came and went and there were no VCRs, no on demand television, no Netflix, no computers even. If you didn’t catch The Likely Lads they would be gone and you might have to wait years to see them again. There was no Tardis to jump into to go back and see that missed episode of Doctor Who, and groundbreaking series like The World of War were so precious that they were often accompanied by a 26 part magazine series to help you relive the experience. And people never talked. Every bit of dialogue, every scene was precious. You rushed to make a cuppa during the adverts or the party political broadcast, or the nine o’clock news if you weren’t particularly interested in what was going on in the world.

For some people retirement holds the same terrors as a Sunday afternoon in the early nineteen seventies. It seems to me that everyone talks about retirement as thought the most important thing is to fill the void of being with yourself, as if it will kill you to be free and to live in an unstructured way. But I came across a comment about retirement in a Guardian article on the subject, written by someone called “User824140” (you must have heard of them I’m sure). I think it sums things up pretty well.

Like so many commentaries about retirement, the consideration of one's identity is almost entirely absent from this piece. This is such a key matter for people approaching the end of their working lives to think about. Many retired people never really get to grips with who they are - their identities remaining defined by the job that they used to do. So many retired people I know almost boast about how busy they are and cannot figure out how they had the time to be employed. I have never really bought this. For some there is a fear of letting go. A friend and former colleague spoke to me about this before my retirement; it was one of the most illuminating discussions I have had. So before filling your life up with things to do, keeping yourself busy or volunteering to do even more work, ask yourself a question. Who are you? Then you can determine who or what you would like to be. Be happy doing nothing for while. Most of all do not be afraid. I spent nearly forty years in a fulfilling job; that has gone and I do not miss it at all. I want to discover who I am and make the most of this new phase in my life. 

Identity is the key word. It is not “what will I do when I retire?” that is the question but “Who am I?”. Depending on how you have lived the rest of your life, the answer may surprise you to a greater or lesser degree - and may just be the key to happiness in old age.