Changing Seasons, and Retirement

The air is brisker at dawn this week, a preliminary sign of fall. Fall is probably my favorite season; as chlorophyll’s green subsides and is replaced by vibrant shades of rust, orange, and yellow, one can easily gain a sense of change in oneself.

I was talking about retirement with a colleague the other day as she approaches her own retirement. She told me about her best friend’s husband, who died suddenly of a heart attack while on a cruise, just months after retirement.

“That’s horrific,” I said. “All that saving, all that planning, and in the end it meant nothing.”

There’s a similar lesson in the acclaimed Korean film Parasite: the best kind of plan is no plan.

“That’s why I don’t want to wait any longer to retire,” she said. “I don’t want to wait for more money or whatever. I don’t want to wait to be rich. I’d rather just be free now.”

A lesson lurked beneath those words. There is a cost to having money. There is a cost to wanting things.

That cost is often freedom, and in a life that’s already painfully short and impossible to forecast, this cost tends to be much higher than people want it to be.

I’d be lying if I said that I don’t still desire things. There’s always an upgrade, and the rate of potential upgrades is accelerating as society turns its faith toward the credit card.

There is always a better car, or another car, or another shirt. Believe me, I can find them easily. Hell, there’s always a better bicycle. One can surgically make oneself taller, lift the face, dye the hair, and smooth out some wrinkles. All of these enhancements will provide a nice illusion: the illusion that time isn’t actually degrading you.

I try to take some deep breaths and absorb this present moment in time. How is this not enough? How do I not have enough?

I am not thinking much about the future these days, or even retirement. It can’t be forecasted, and hopes bring with them stresses. I’ll just be glad to enjoy this fall season.

A Yearner’s Dilemma

The boy sat at the crest of the sandy New Mexico hill and gazed out toward the pastel-colored horizon. The air was still and the sun seethed his flesh. He didn’t mind the heat. The sweat reminded him that he was still alive, that he could still feel discomfort. If I could just finish school and get into college, he thought, I will have made it. I won’t need to worry anymore.

The student waited anxiously in his college dormitory for his exam grades to appear on his computer screen. He refreshed the screen continuously, hoping for the grades that would lead him towards salvation in the form of salary. If I can just finish college and get into Grad school, I will have done what I need to do, he thought. I will have made it. I won’t need to worry anymore.

The young graduate sat at his newly purchased office desk and stared at a phone that wouldn’t ring. Any day the company’s HR department would call to let him know whether he was selected for the position. If I can just get a good job I will have done everything I set out to do, he thought. I will have made it. I won’t need to worry anymore. I’ll have a salary.

The young professional calculated his new retirement plan to gauge whether it was trending towards his financial goals. These goals were fed to him via his company and told him whether or not his life would be secure in old age. Four years into work and he was still far off-target. He wouldn’t have his annual health insurance, life insurance, or vacation savings at an adequate level to keep from going under. Heart attacks are on the rise, after all. So he stared at his financial figures. Numbers floated in the space of his computer screen, but the numbers were not high enough. If I can just have another one hundred thousand dollars, I will have made it, he thought. I’ll have everything I need. I can finally stop chasing.

Having suffered a mid-life crisis in spite of a generous salary raise, the newly anointed executive stared at his newfound gray hairs and furrowed brow. Who is this balding and debilitating thing staring back at me through the mirror, this creature that was once a child? Now the kids have expenses for their sports. The family food bill is a flood that’s drowning his hopes and dreams. Damn their carnivorous appetites and their needs for toys. I was supposed to have made it, the executive thought to himself. But I’m falling farther behind. He couldn’t even begin to think about college expenses for the kids, nonetheless retirement. He’d be bound to virtual work as an octogenarian, crippled in a nursing home yet still reviewing spreadsheets. But if I can just get another two hundred thousand dollars, he thought, maybe I’ll have what I need. Maybe I can stop worrying. I will have made it.

The newly retired corporate careerist left the office at noon a free man. He was scared: hopefully Social Security would be high enough to cover his future costs. He had no benefits. And to make matters worse he had crippling anxiety from the past decades of work, and his fears steadily debilitated his cardiovascular health. He had enough, but did he have enough to truly be free? His dreams of European vacations still seemed out-of-reach. Maybe if I work part-time, he thought, I’d still have time to get there. He just needed an extra hundred thousand dollars. Time was ticking. The males in his family have a history of strokes and most of these strokes hit in the late 60s. He was 67. And yet he hadn’t done anything but try to get ahead. None of it felt fair. He didn’t have anything that he was entitled to.

Still, he thought, just another hundred thousand dollars and I’ll truly be free. I’ll have what I need to cover my bases. I will have made it. I can finally stop worrying.

He thought of the little boy on the New Mexico hill and wished he’d learned to stop yearning sixty years prior.

Some Life Reflections

I learned that my uncle passed away earlier this week. It was something of a shock to me because the possibility of his passing wasn’t remotely on my mind. Unlike when my grandfather passed away last year, I had no dreams of a final communication. He was 67.

My first thought is that life is short and precious. He lived a very full life. Longevity in terms of years should never be assumed under any circumstance. I hope for longevity and yet if my own span is 67 years, I’m past the halfway marker. If my own span is less than 67 years, what the hell is the point of planning for retirement?

I find myself constantly moving these days. The realization of my own mortality is part of the reason for that. I suspect that somewhere behind me, Death approaches, scythe in hand. I don’t know how many miles of headway I have. Continuous movement may bide more time. But then again, nothing is guaranteed.

I always had good encounters with my uncle Bill. I didn’t get to know him well enough. I suspect we often feel that way upon the death of a relative.

I remember when he and his daughter drove to Minnesota to watch me compete at the NCAA Swimming Championships. It was my freshman year, which was about seventeen years ago. I remember looking up in the stands when I was preparing to swim and seeing him wearing my college team’s apparel. He was cheering loudly and it meant the world to me. He didn’t know me all that well and certainly had no obligation to attend. His being there really warmed my heart. He struck me as someone with an intense sense of loyalty to family.

He never knew this—in fact my own family never knew this—but he became something of a legend between me and my roommate in college. We always talked about “being tough like Bill.” When culture seemed to weaken, it needed to “toughen up like Bill.” “Bill’s out in weather thirty degrees below zero, working on a construction site to help feed his family, and these college wusses can’t get out of bed for class!” It’s true that he was a construction worker in North Dakota under some of the harshest weather imaginable. He was blue collar to the core, tough as nails, and due to that toughness one would wonder if anything could ever eventually take him down. He also had a warm smile and a wicked sense of humor that I appreciated.

I wish that I made the effort to tell Bill about those stories. I hadn’t spoken to him in a long time, though I wish I had. As I get older and I experience more family members passing away, I sense that we often think of the things we wish we had said, not the things we said. I hope Bill knew that I really appreciated him though, however brief our encounters.

I’ll close this blog with the thought that tomorrow is a new day—hopefully a day devoid of getting caught up in the everyday petty bs concerns—and hopefully the new day brings a new adventure. I’ll think of Bill as I do my best to “just have a good time.” I‘ll make plans, but not retirement plans. There are no plans for my 67th year, or my 66th! My plans involve gravel roads, a desert sky, granite mountains, a bicycle, and a menagerie of wildlife.

The Nothing

“Beware the barrenness of a busy life.” - Socrates

I had a fun conversation this week with a colleague about the 80’s film The Neverending Story. In the days that followed I found myself thinking about the evil that threatened to destroy the magical world of Fantasia, “The Nothing.”

The Nothing was tied to the human world. In the film it resembled a black hole that swallowed and essentially deleted from existence all of the mystical lands and creatures of Fantasia. It was directly correlated with the adult lack of imagination and failure to dream or read books.

With the film having been released decades ago and the book it’s based on long before that, I wonder if The Nothing would have easily triumphed over Fantasia in today’s world. I suspect it would.

I recalled a friend of mine’s toddler who sat in the back seat while we drove to a museum, the toddler’s eyes glued to her tablet screen. How will such a toddler, always enveloped by dopamine-inducing stimulus, ever have time to imagine? It is through boredom that creativity grows. It seems that The Nothing now swallows many of us before we are even old enough to read in the first place.

The Nothing makes us busy, and in its clutter it makes us barren. With more websites to browse, more things to buy, more emails to answer, more shows to watch, more tasks to complete, The Nothing envelopes us in inadequacy. And at the core of this inadequacy is money. Therefore, money is at the core of The Nothing.

The toddler therefore abandons nature in favor of WiFi.

On the other end of the age spectrum is the retiree. Consumed with planning, the 65-year-old retiree is concerned almost entirely with projections. Projections of lifespan, projections of benefits, projections of health. All of these projections gravitate around money.

Whereas they once fretted for their job security and bonuses, retirees soon fret for health security. The primary question of the consumerist model does not fully disappear: Do I have enough?

Gone are simple days spent being. With money having consumed the retiree’s every thought, every worry, and every bit of motivation, for years upon years, the modern consumerist model has completely devoured the retiree’s spirit. Wholly dependent on the system for what the retiree now values most, which is predictability and stability, the retiree no longer focuses so much on what he or she deems trivial: things like creation and meditation. What money, what insurance, after all, are supplied by creativity? Instead, the retiree’s focus is on wills, on healthcare, and on potential future nursing homes.

Burn me at the stake, I say, before sending me to a damned nursing home!

Free from the shackles of work, the retiree is shackled to insurance and rife with anxiety over pension plans. “Will I get my promotion” is quickly placed with, “But will it get me through?”

The what ifs of the working world subside, and the what ifs of the healthcare world infect.

It is no wonder then that so many retirees struggle to find purpose, when in fact there is a thousand years’ worth of purpose in a single ray of sunshine. The retiree’s sole focus for so many decades was on “finally having security” that the act of retirement only breeds more insecurity: a lack of passion, a renewed anxiety over wellbeing, and a focus solely on money.

The retiree, consumed by being busy, struggles to breathe. He or she will therefore often find new things to be busy over, and there is great risk in these things being too superficial to live long for.

The focus for so many decades was on having enough money that money can become the retiree’s primary value. It will not simply dissipate because one is retired. It will instead shapeshift into forms more sinister. The Nothing will prevail.

And in between the toddler that is introduced to a consumerist model of screens, and the retiree fully consumed by the consumerist model of funeral planning and pension spending, are those lost in between, navigating the unknown, figuring out what is truly valuable to them.

Will The Nothing finish them off, or will they learn to read again?

It is easy to be rendered cynical by the hoard, but it is still relatively easy to defeat The Nothing.

Take a moment to breathe. Do nothing, just stare and breathe. Let your mind wander where it may. Don’t look at any screens or the wasteful notifications that blink from them. Don’t prepare anything or mark anything or clean anything or throw anything away. Was it easy? Then do the same, but for ten minutes. Then try an hour. Look at a plant, or an animal. Let your mind wander. Then when you’re done, pick up a book and read a few pages.

The Nothing just shrank a bit.