No time for retirement

Have you ever had one of those days, weeks or perhaps lives, where you are continually running from one thing to another?  No time to think, no time to eat, no time to breath!  Busy, busy, busy.  Well, that’s okay you say, because some day you will retire and everything will change.  Sounds good, but if you are like most people, it is a pipedream.  Most of the people I know who have retired will tell you that they are now busier than when they were working.  This does not make sense.  How can you possibly be busier when you are not working than when you are working?  This is a good question to ponder.  Let me share with you a typical schedule from one of the “retirement” centers near where we live in Arizona:  The Galloping Seniors Retirement Park:

8 AM                  Yoga on chairs

9 AM                  Dance lessons:  Waltz, Modern Dance (Tango optional)

10 AM                Card Games:  Bridge, Poker  (5 dollar limit on pot)

11 AM                Bingo

12 PM                Potluck Lunch

I PM                   Golf Tee off or balance training

3 PM                  Pickleball  (book club optional)

4:30 PM             Patio Drinks (Alcohol optional)

5:00 PM             Dinner for seniors (low calorie)

7:00 PM             Classic Movie Time or old reruns of Lawrence Welk show

9:00 PM             Bedtime

If you have any left over time, you might have grand-parenting responsibilities, church responsibilities, club memberships, family commitments, gardening, blogging, social clubs, continuing education and the occasional part-time job.  Then you have to factor in doctor appointments for increasing medical problems.  I have little doubt that the reason many old people talk about health incessantly is that medical problems and time spent dealing with them become a dominant use of time.   Medical problems are not optional like Pickleball. 

There is a simple solution to the problem of time.  Don’t retire!  Continue doing what you have done for the rest of your remaining life. Why screw things up with a new schedule when you have spent many years adjusting to the old schedule.  If you were not happy with your pre-retirement life what makes you think you will be any happier with a new post-retirement plan?    I know what you are thinking:  “How can he say that.  I have been working for thirty years with a dream of retirement and living each day fishing and golfing and he wants me to continue to work.  Is he nuts?”   One good reasons is that many studies show that people do not live long after they retire but then who really believes all of these so called scientific studies anyway. 

However, there are several other practical reasons not to retire. One is that you will not have to worry about the government taking your Medicare and social security benefits away.  Think of all the stress this will take off of your life knowing that you are not dependent on the government to pay for your increasing taxes and health care.  Of course, this will probably be offset somewhat by your rising health care costs which shortly before you die will exceed the national deficit.  I am sure you are all familiar with the costs of keeping an elderly person alive.  It goes up exponentially with each week or month aspired to.  Karen says that we should each live to be about 90 years old.  I figure that during my last year on this earth, I will probably contribute at least a million dollars to support the medical establishment.  By continuing to work, I can defer the costs somewhat and feel more useful even as my bones ache and my mobility diminishes.  In addition, when you are working, you get the weekends off.  Have you ever heard of a retiree with the weekends off?  This reminds me of another reason for the lack of time when we retire.

Have you ever noticed that retirees and the elderly move more slowly?  They also drive more slowly.  This means more time is spent simply getting from one place to another.  When we were young, we could go from A to B in zero time.   As teenagers we zipped from one place to another in the blink of any eye.  Now that we are older, we wait for the red light.  We look both ways before crossing the street.  We hold onto the bannister when walking up and down stairs.  We ponder the varieties and freshness of fruit and vegetables at the grocery store. We also take much longer in the buffet lines as we decide which non-healthy foods we dare take today. 

Karen keeps reminding me that I am going to grow old someday, but I am putting it off by not retiring.  When anyone asks if I am going to retire, I tell them my plan is to retire when I am 93.  With any luck, my job will still be in vogue and I can continue motivating students who need to develop career skills so that they can dream of retirement someday.  I hope to counter this dream of retirement by extolling the virtues of working until we die.  Why should anyone feel that they are entitled to quit being productive?  Why should the elderly feel that the young should support their flamboyant and hectic retirement lifestyles?  

Are you dreaming of retirement?  What will you do with your time?  What could help you to enjoy your retirement time more?  What can you do to help insure that your retirement is really a chance to enjoy life more and not fill your time with escapist activities?  The real danger of retirement in my opinion is that we think we can retire from life. 

Retire from work, but not from life.
— M. K. Soni