.floatimg-left-hort { float:left; } .floatimg-left-caption-hort { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:300px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-vert { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right:15px; width:200px;} .floatimg-left-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; font-size: 12px; width:200px;} .floatimg-right-hort { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px;} .floatimg-right-caption-hort { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px; font-size: 12px; } .floatimg-right-vert { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px;} .floatimg-right-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; font-size: 12px; } .floatimgright-sidebar { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; border-top-style: double; border-top-color: black; border-bottom-style: double; border-bottom-color: black;} .floatimgright-sidebar p { line-height: 115%; text-indent: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar h4 { font-variant:small-caps; } .pullquote { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 150px; background: url(http://www.dmbusinessdaily.com/DAILY/editorial/extras/closequote.gif) no-repeat bottom right !important ; line-height: 150%; font-size: 125%; border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} .floatvidleft { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatvidright { float:right; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;}
Time hangs like a curse or a blessing over retirement. Which it’s going to be depends on whether you let time liberate you – or enslave you.

We become enslaved when we are preoccupied with how things used to be, whom we used to know, what we used to do, where we used to go.

We are enslaved by memory when we feel that everything that’s gone before is lost, never to be regained, like part of us missing.

We are enslaved when, facing God’s big deadline, we begin to think of ourselves and refer to ourselves as old, and focus our attention on the physical activities our bodies no longer let us do.

We are liberated when we see ourselves as an accumulation of all the experiences, bad and good, we’ve ever had, all the people we’ve ever known, all the things we’ve ever done – and when we see that none of it is lost but rather has been part of the great adventure that nurtured us into who we are today.

We are liberated when we accept the infirmities of aging while maintaining the attitude that, in Gertrude Stein’s words, “we are always the same age inside,” and that we can imbue our lives with even more meaning now than ever before. On the surface, it’s easy enough to intellectualize this attitude, but it’s something else again to embrace with our minds and spirits the full potential of the rest of our lives.

Understand this: There can be a terrible loss of identity when you retire. If you have defined yourself by what you do – and most of us have defined ourselves that way at one point or another – then when what you do goes away, so does a large part of the person you perceive yourself to be.

After the rituals

I’ve seen it many times. A person retires; there’s the retirement party, the celebration, the gifts, the good wishes and that happy morning when he or she doesn’t have to get up and go to work. But after the vacation and the golf games and fishing excursions and the long-postponed household projects, the reality hits and hits hard: “I don’t have a job. For the first time in my life I don’t have a job.”

Then one day the retiree decides to just drop by the office to see how things are, to chat up some old colleagues, to maybe have lunch in the company cafeteria or in one of the old midday watering holes frequented by everyone “in the business.”

It is one of the saddest sights at any company: the recent retiree making the rounds, dropping in for a chat, completely unaware that he or she is now an interruption to the person who is politely smiling and nodding.

Retirement from any kind of American organization, profit or nonprofit, has developed its own mythology accompanied by rituals and communal observances that are not unlike a funeral. And too often, the net effect on the retiree has been a self-perception somewhere between has-been and never-was.

Why do people get into this situation? Why do they feel the need to return to the workplace, as if connected by some emotional or psychological umbilical cord? Why can’t they cut loose? Simple. Even though they think they have planned comprehensively for retirement, they are nevertheless suffering from a lack of the right kind of planning.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Instead, retirement can become a liberating path toward a life of opportunity, along with personal and spiritual growth. But you have to want it, which means you have to accept and embrace a way of thinking that will move you positively through the transition. It begins with aligning your own perceptions and intentions with the new reality of your life.

Work isn’t everything

First we need to understand that “retirement” is an economic term, not a social, psychological, emotional or spiritual term. Thus it really applies only to the economic, or work, phase of life.

It’s fruitless as well as depressing to try to keep up with what’s happening at the old workplace. If there are friendships, of course they should continue to be nurtured, but only in social settings away from the office. Beyond that, realize that retirement is the time to move on, the time to make that new start so many of us dream about. In fact, retirement is the grand opportunity to stop doing and concentrate on being, to become the person you want to be.

If you’re like most people, and particularly if you’re a Baby Boomer, you probably feel you already put much time and effort into retirement planning, but have you planned your life or only your income? Have you considered the emotional and spiritual, rather than just the financial, aspects of retirement? Have you planned for what I call, for lack of a better term, a spiritual retirement?

There is an entire category of media – books, magazines, advertisements by the hundreds – devoted to promoting one financial planning service or another. Their illustrations feature the ubiquitous AARP couple: a handsome, silver-haired man, lean, trim, tanned and fit, paired with an equally youthful-looking silver-haired woman. These beautiful people with movie-star teeth are always smiling as they ski or swim or fish or golf or gaze from the deck of a luxury liner. And the message is always the same: Our financial planners or investment counselors or mutual fund managers or securities brokers can help you find that feeling of well-being, contentment and security that will allow you to have the fullest possible retirement. Well-being. Contentment. Security.

Add to these scenarios the same beautiful couple dancing romantically across a page featuring a promotion for Viagra, and the inevitable conclusion is that the retiring Baby Boomers will want for absolutely nothing.

Except what, perhaps?

Seeking the answer

The answer begs for a definition of well-being, contentment and security. Does it include emotional fulfillment, joy and bliss? Does it include a deep sense of connection with the people you most care about and who most care about you? And what about a continuing or a renewed quest for a greater understanding of the ageless mysteries, of the great unknown, of a higher power, of God?

The media induce you to look forward to the good life. Nothing wrong with that. But consider also looking beyond the good life and consider also the life of goodness.

When you plan the financial aspects of retirement, you don’t just put the money away and forget about it. You pay attention to what’s happening with it; you actively manage it, working that into your daily or weekly schedule. You must do the same thing with your spiritual retirement planning. You can’t just say, “When I retire I’ll take time for the things that enrich my inner life.” You have to take time now and begin to practice those things now. Just as there should be a seamless transition in your financial life, there should be an equally seamless transition in your spiritual life.

Thus the objective of spiritual retirement planning should be to arrive at retirement day with an absolute, deep belief that life so far has been just a prelude to NOW, that it has all been part of making you who you are today so that you can concentrate less on the doing and more on the being, less on yourself and more on others. Next is the realization that everything that has gone before adds up to a you who is ready to make a difference in something other than product or process or profit. You can say: “I’ve done that and I’ve done it well, but it was not who I am, only what I did. Now I can concentrate on who I am and discover a person who is more than the sum of a 30-year career.”

Just remember that, though you may indeed choose to do works of significance and you may make admirable accomplishments on your retirement path, these choices should not be about recognition or reward; they should be about being and becoming who you want to be for the rest of your life.