AGING IS AN ART: Retirement
A friend recently asked me about retirement.
“Was it difficult?” My reply, without giving it much thought: “No, it was surprisingly easy.”
When he then went on to ask what made it so easy, I was forced to give the topic the attention it deserved. A quick AI/Google/ internet search found that roughly 50% of us find retirement difficult. Some 30% or more of us report “not being happier or struggling significantly with the major life transition into retirement.” Up to 50% of workers report “feeling heavy anxiety when thinking about their post-work future.” All this anxiety, surprisingly, is not primarily due to financial insecurity concerns.
Introspection is always wise after a Google search.
For 40 years, I allowed my job as a professor of Theatre and Film at Humboldt State University to define my life. I loved that job. I was able to live and teach in many parts of the world because of that job. I made lifelong friends because of that job. I was able to afford to live here in beautiful Humboldt County because of that job.
Why was it so easy for me to give it up?
Like many of my Boomer colleagues, I stressed when thinking about retirement. Plentiful research did very little to lower that stress level. It was the actual act of retirement that was the stress reliever. I found a way to do what I loved outside of HSU that had both defined and benefited me.
If you have spent your life in a hated job, endured until retirement age to support a family, pay bills or for the health insurance, I think I understand. May you find new purpose and passion in your retirement.
The anxieties most often expressed about retirement are by those people who loved their jobs and paradoxically allowed their jobs to define who they were. People like me. I loved teaching! I loved all that teaching manifested. Retirement meant letting go of HSU and being defined by what I did. For me, it did not mean letting go of what I loved doing.
Our collective future may be well served by what we Boomers do in our retirement years. Can we connect with the core of what we loved about our jobs and working lives and find ways to continue to do that without the benefits and restrictions of the institutions we allowed to define us?
I think our grandchildren would like that.
John Heckel, Ph.D., in his “retirement,” directs theatre productions, runs a writers’ group, writes this monthly column and is a member of the Senior News Community Advisory Council in his spare time. He is a retired HSU theatre and film professor with a doctorate in psychology.
Email: jh2@humboldt.edu.
