This week, I had dinner with a couple of friends – work buddies from a time when my life was quite different than it is today. We caught up on the happenings in each other’s lives and as they spoke of the challenges and triumphs of daily life, I found myself back in the land of the strangely familiar. I was there once, juggling the job with that other life, the ones that include, family, community, friends, and so on.
I thought I knew what to expect from retirement. After all, I had planned for this life season over many years. I had plans with those dusty projects that had been sitting on the back burner for years. Finally, it would be my time, and in those proceeding moments, I would give life to the thoughts that had been roaming in my head for so long.
At the time of retirement, I wrote about those thoughts, that new voice nudging me to bring my passions to life. I spoke of retirement as a blessing and a challenge. Nothing could have been more true.
So, what of that voice? What have I done to heed her call? There is much about retirement that has been exactly as I expected and I have kept my promise. I have not become the old woman sitting in front of the television set eating Bon Bons and watching soap operas. Yet, I am finding that some of those “critical” dusty projects may not be so important, after all. In some ways, I am the same person, but in many ways, I have changed – my priorities have changed. It is far too easy to fall into the trap of replacing one job with another obligation. The structure of work is ingrained in my being. It is what I know, what I have lived…but it is not who I am. I had to let go of the need to achieve to make room for the life I wanted to live.
I didn’t expect to be different, but I am.
Retirement is a time of rebuilding the self, not an occupation. There is a critical difference between who you are and what you do. For me, the hardest part of retirement has been resisting the urge to define myself by accomplishments, to check off some self-imposed to-do list each day. What remains when the job is gone?
And so, I find myself returning to the beginning of a radically different season, attending to that beckoning voice, the one that reflects my true self, the only one that can guide me home. It is a time to greet life again with a new me, one that reflects relationships and passions, without the structural chains. In the face of change, retirement is a season for balance and fearlessness. So, I place one wobbly foot in front of the other and step forward knowing that each day is an adventure, sometimes into the unknown. There is no failure in setting limits or changing direction. Life is about the journey, a grand exploration of a shared life. That is enough of a goal.