Retirement

My friends are retiring, as in, failing to go to work each day.  Some enter a frenetic world of unpaid labor, for which they get only thanks, what they were looking for in the first place.  Others wake later and later, and dissipate the hours in some combination of household tasks and electric aided entertainment that quickly causes the sun to set. (If you ever doubt how much electricity determines your activity, throw the breaker and see how quickly you become bored.)  I watch the transition with some envy and more despair.

I have always wanted to do more than I can possibly manage.  In theory, it is only the eight hours of paid labor I do each day that gets in the way of the incredible productivity I have in my mind.  But each weekend I disprove this fantasy, as I loaf and lounge and entertain my way through my free hours. I know that if my job disappeared, I would be no more likely to get to my long list of potential accomplishments as I am in the hours between work.  I think that we have a set point for purposeful activity, just like we do for calorie intake.

Recently my eighty year old mother visited me for two weeks and put real fear into me.  Although she has been busy and involved with many activities in her life, she is markedly slower in her physical self, and has become ridden with worry and a sense of fruitlessness that spoils any effort to engage in meaningful acts.  I realize that old age is a battle between your body and your mind.  Whichever is weaker pulls the other down and the spiral can be inexorable. 

I am sure I don't want to end up like that.  I don't want to have decades with no purpose.  Even though my job has its repetitive grind, it is still the most interesting part of most days.  I think most people retire because are sick unto death with the job they have, not because life without a job seems so compelling.   But I don't know.  Retirement is something you can't know until you get there.  I'm not there by a long shot.