Potholes on the retirement road

People enjoin me do whatever irrational I want to pursue after 60. Wonder the bag-of-bones I'll be in (referring only to me owing to my genetic disposition) to do what ever I want after 60. Age is only a number but it surely is a high number! The links in the bondage, plated in pusillanimity or prudence, are so strong that we are incapacitated by a systemic fear to unlink. What-if always hangs as a noose to these shackles. When do we reach that age where inanity can be excused as senility; I need to be old enough to be brushed off as old enough to do young enough things, eh? (just me thinking loud)

Add a gymnast, astronomer, air-hostess, newsreader and plumber (yes hydrodynamics interests me) to that list. Isn't life a balance , a fine balance between what one wants to do and what one is supposed to do. I sound too fanciful but I popped as pious, belched for a long time in the same modality, pupated as agnostic and only recently perched on atheist camp. So for me the faith, tenet to chant as hodiernal rosary is Organic Chemistry 101 —"Okay, listen , what can go utterly wrong with bunch of carbon atoms. I'm only bunch of carbon atoms, carbon atoms" has helped to de-stress, pursue my dreams and leverage that frivolity into fierceness. For many ardor in life is sustained by religion, culture, LSD, what ever one is comfortable to attune to. I'm really scared of the pedantic & practical underscore that people frighten me at times with empirical data. Look what happened to so-and-so. Yes many times I follow up with these manques to understand and realize that failed actors are happy writers, failed singers are happy dancers, failed 'here' is happy 'there'. Life finds a way. I'd rather try something and fail rather than not try and feign caution. Surely in the grand scheme of things what some errant amino acid block-head does should not matter to cannibalistic galaxies on collision course.

People ask me if I envisage teaching, adopt kids, run a marathon, root some charities! jeez, are they kidding?! I've never occupied any important position in life that needed my decision even to swat a mosquito. I'm too ignorant to spawn more ignorants. Something about being disposable yet singular in one's thoughts and actions makes life quite interesting. Knowing that I'm mulch one day, I want to be that pipped mulch from exhaustion of passion and vim to pursue my dreams. My diversion to self-discovery has less to do with ergonomical departure but more to do with excersiable devolution which can happen at any age, to delve deeper into self and question — what am I doing, where am I headed or the least who am I. Here I leave you with "The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock" on seeing those whorls of smoke from your disconcerted head. The first time I read the poem I was shaking my head, the second time I was yawning and the third time I rushed to fill the form to join prufockian cult.


LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question….
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.


(cntd here & text here)


Surely we are no longer talking about retirement, we moved on from retirement to reclamation to renascence of life which begins not when one retires but when one starts to re-live. I've meandered quite a lot but that is only me frothing trying to imagine a younger or perverted version of you. Always a pleasure to read your posts and perspective but it a great privilege to chime in and rattle one's head to gush I can't tell you how much I can relate to your post.

 

Viswa Sir. I pray that you have a fulfilling retirement. I hope that you will never retire from IL, guiding the rest of us.

 

Dear Viswa,


Assure you that there was nothing sly in sidelining your enumerated post and exalting Cheeniya's intrepidity to retire at the age of 48. I was meaning to write to you and comment on your post but pretty much what I wanted to say is interweaved, parallelized in my colloquy with Cheeniya. I've read your feedbacks to everyone expositing your valedictory misgiving to corporate lifestyle. Really this is one of the threads that has incorporated a sense of providential planning for my not-so-green-days. I've a feeling that my stint in this thread will streak through my mind during my farewell address.

 

Oh, don't worry about it Viswa. We are a bunch of zealous people who wanted to take over the world by being one-in-all and all-in-one. And we did not tell you about the wager to verify which of our headless chicken hobbling enterprise to retire early will flip you.

I desire to go back not to university, college but my elementary school as a pupil to learn everything from basics again. What can you make of me? Okay, I won't scare you lest you will not login to IL from tomorrow.

 

Dear Viswamitra,

A nice collection of thoughts on retirement.

In my opinion many of my generation in India are housewives who virtually do not retire until it is physically or mentally impossible to contribute. Even in these days ladies retire from work outside and start working as house wives to take care of the family. We continue to work even after our husbands retire from their work. In the lighter vein, some may get even confused getting their house routines changed( with a husband hanging around from 10 to 5) without going to office.

But for the husbands of our generation, probably retirement is a challenge not necessarily from health and wealth.

I think the greatest challenge is the dilemma of suddenly found, wealth (or liability?) called huge extra time.

I think those who do not manage this wealth effectively, will junk, leading to a chain of problems including mental and physical health. The wealth becomes a liability.

One has to Plan carefully and manage the time, after retirement, with or without income, very carefully, effectively to be busy. I think if time is managed one has managed his retirement with great results.

 

Dear Viswamitra,

What do I say? You have written about a topic close to my heart. I wanted to reply yesterday as soon as I had read this snippet, but then postponed it, since I wanted to write my snippet before I forgot what it was I wanted to say!

My dad who was in govt. service retired at the age of 58. He had suffered 2 major and 3 minor strokes in his early 50s. One more miracle I witnessed in my life - he got back on his bicycle after that and used to cycle 4 kms to and 4 kms from his work after that. I shall never forget the look of pain and loss the day he came back home on the last day of his service. I was in college at that time.

I guess there are two kinds of people. The first kind are like my dad. He was happiest when he was doing something. Gradually one could notice the discontent growing in him. That is when our family doc told my mom that it was imperative he continue working, if he was not to start questioning his own self-worth. My dad worked in 3 places from that time till he finally hung up his working shoes at the age of 75 when he felt unequal to the task of handling finances - he felt he had started forgetting things. I am not so sure of that. Even when he was back home and on steroids after he was out of hospital (he was suffering from cancer), he used the extra month or two he had working out his IT returns. The doc came home to see him and asked where the patient was. :-D Even in hospital, my sis would play word jumble from the newspapers with him. She would tell him the letters while she was trying to work on it with the paper in her hand and dad would have the answer before she did.

Proud as I am of my genetic inheritance from my dad, I am sad to say, I am the other kind of person - not my dad's type. I am the type who retired before I was really properly ensconced in my job or should I say I had retirement heaped on me? Although I was unhappy for a few days, feeling bad that I was financially dependent, I soon learned to revel in my retired life and to be grateful to have the means to a comfortable life, no matter where it came from! Who am I to question when God intended it that way? How many people can say they are happy, contented, comfortable, all while being able to do exactly what they want to do?

So - to retire or not to retire - it is really a question that is best answered by the individual in question.