Retirement Can Wait
Happiness is not our endgame, its a tool we should wield.
My older brother retired from being a police officer before he turned 50. My older brother was a terrible brother. He was a narcissist and a bully. But, as an adult, my brother was an amazing police officer. His supervisors loved him because he did everything “by the book”, making them look good. The rank and file officers hated him because he did everything “by the book”, making them look bad. He once arrested a co-worker who left another police officer’s retirement party for drunk driving. If every police officer was the police officer my brother was, we would have an exemplary law enforcement system.
It was a terrible waste for my brother to retire at such a young age. When his skills were at their peak, his training and experience extensive, he retired. He was truly an asset to the community he served, and would be for many more years to come if he so wished.
This happens in all professions. Great doctors, great sanitation engineers, great lawyers, great cashiers; professions of all kinds are losing tremendous workers with decades-long accumulated knowledge, training, and experience at times when their skills are at their best.
The concept of retirement for me first was raised when I was a senior in college. The brightest of my group of friends, Damon, announced that he was going to work until he was 40 years old. He said he would have accumulated enough wealth by that time to retire and spend the rest of his time living a life of leisure.
After undergraduate graduation, Damon went to Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League school, and became a business consultant. He went to Wall Street and worked 70 hour work weeks. He traveled to all the business centers of the United States, making recommendations to CEOs and CFOs on how to more efficiently run their companies. He golfed at the greatest golf courses in America on the weekends. He met another Wall Street consultant, fell in love, and got his heart broken. Devastated, and exhausted, he left Wall Street and returned home. Now home, he lost a small fortune in stocks secondary to ignoring basic tenets he learned at Penn, gambled away a lot of his other money, fell in love a second time, got married, and had two kids. His wife stopped working when they had their first child, and would not go back to work after promising to do so when all their children were in school. Damon did not retire at 40. Heck, Damon may never retire.
Did it start with my generation? I was born at the end of the baby boomer years, 1965. This idea of working as few years as you can, then retiring to a life of leisure for 20 years, or 30 years, or even 40 years. Both my mother’s parents worked until they physically could no longer do so, and that was the norm of my grandparents generation, and the generations before them. You worked until you no longer physically could, then hopefully spend a couple years of relative good health resting and enjoying your family. Then you died.
I spent three weeks in Guatemala as part of my Army Reserve training. The U.S. Government made an arrangement to station us in an old Guatemalan Army Base that had recently been turned over by the local drug cartels in exchange for an area of land where the government promised not to interfere with their activities. We got training in being in an environment that was totally new to us in every way, and the Guatemalan government got the presence of the United States Army being in the area formerly held by the drug cartels. A win-win.
We met this man who looked to be in his 70’s. He didn’t speak English. He really didn’t speak Spanish, it was more of a local tribal dialect we were told. He lived on top of a mountain that the army base was at the bottom of. Every day, we saw this elderly man come down into the base in the morning, gather up about 25 pounds of firewood, tie it to his back, and hike back up the mountain to his home. Every day. He was always smiling.
Some of our younger and fit recruits asked the local soldiers if the old man would allow them to follow him back to his home as a form of physical training. Every day, a new group of young soldiers would leave with this old man with 25 pounds of wood on his back. Not one time did any of these soldiers (carrying nothing but water) reach this man’s home. Not one time did a soldier try more than once to reach this man’s home.
I got my first job as a paperboy in my teens. I worked all through college. The longest hiatus from work I’ve ever taken was just this year, when I took four weeks off as a respite. It was amazing. I was so relaxed. The stress was gone. I spent my days enjoying the sunshine and warmth on my skin. I read books, I watched television, I did the crossword puzzle in the paper, I read the sports pages, I called and visited people, I drank beer in greater quantities. It was wonderful. But is that a reason to stop working? Do we stop working just because the life of leisure is amazing and because we can?
Happiness is not the endgame. Its a tool we need to use to make this greatly flawed place we call Earth a better place to be.
There seems to be this great emphasis on “mindfulness” and the pursuit of happiness that involves letting go of material possessions, of the quest for influence and power, and of the allure of status. That happiness doesn’t come from such things as these, rather it comes from devoting yourself to a path of joyous activity, of learning who you are and not getting side tracked by the accumulation of wealth.
I totally get it, and ascribe to such a life. Personally, my life has changed in so many positive ways secondary to adopting these principles that I am immensely grateful, and amazed that I was able to live so many decades the old way. I remember days where suicide was a possibility. Not as some sort of irrational, spur of the moment possibility, but as a well thought out plan of action, knowing that one day it would be too painful to live anymore with such bouts of mental anguish, disappointment, and frustration.
But now that I am happy most days, do I just stop and bask in my happiness? Do I live a life of making just enough money to cover my now reduced expenditures, spending the majority of my time involved in activities that bring me joy? Do I turn more inward, concern myself with more of my self-development, ignoring the world around me?
Some of my generation are allowing “mindfulness” to become the equivalent of the younger generation’s “gaming culture”. Escapism from the world around them. The new opiate to distance themselves from the work that needs to be done to improve this place called Earth.
Happiness is crucial. Happiness is the fuel we need to live life. Without happiness, nothing good is possible. But it should not be our finish line. Indeed, it should be our launch point, our starting line. To a life of action, a life of purpose, a life of increased energy, a life of making the world a better place.
As we discover our increased capacity to be happy by using the mental approach gained from mindfulness, we need to be looking for opportunities to make a more positive impact. I’m living more fully by taking more trips, meditating at increased frequency and duration, getting out into nature, giving up possessions, spending more time with friends and family. But I’m also working more hours at the job that I have a tremendous amount of training and experience. Not only have my hours increased, but my productivity while I’m working has gone up. Mindfulness has opened up new found hours of free time secondary to less time spent in front of a television, less time trapped in my head with ruminations about the past and future, less time spent sleeping from exhaustion, and less time wasted with unhealthy coping behaviors like alcohol.
Mindfulness can make us happier, but as important, it can make us more productive. We must not stop at “happy”, but utilize that benefit to improve the world around us.
My brother lasted about a year in retirement. He has two great loves in life. Police work, and a small town in the mountains of California. He was smart enough to combine the two. As the kids today would say, he is living his best life…and the world is a much better place for it, especially that small town in the mountains.
Would I be happier if I cut back my work hours? Perhaps seek out a less stressful position at my place of employment? Gosh, of course I would be. But I don’t believe the point of life is to maximize my happiness. I believe the point of life is to do my best to make this place a better place. I can only do that if I am happy, but I can’t let happiness stop me either.
