Rethinking Retirement: Practice the Basic Commitments of Life

The Baby Boomer generation, more than 70 million Americans who were born between 1946 and 1964, is now retiring. Like most people from that group, I have many friends and relatives who have already moved from the world of paid employment. Others, still short of the age when Medicare and Social Security benefits begin, are pondering the change. Both my wife and I have retired.

At least for my age group, this is a topic on everyone’s mind. Getting older means questions from work colleagues about your retirement plans. People who see you less frequently ask if you are still working. The presumption is that this is one of life’s basic changes and failure to complete it requires some explanation.

There may be cultures that consider this sort of conversation rude, but here the interrogators deem it a general expression of interest and support. Of course, those questioners usually have a deeper purpose. People still working want assurance, the knowledge that the transition is going smoothly. If you are still working, they want to hear you have a plan for moving on. Those already retired desire confirmation. To fellow initiates they exclaim, “Isn’t this great? We should have done it years ago.” To the resister: “Join us. Every day is Saturday.”

What nobody wants to hear are complaints and demurrals. These include comments that one wishes they had stayed at their job, that they need the income and that they are now lonely and depressed. Spare listeners the truth that your former employer effectively forced you out or that your spouse demanded this. At least before casual acquaintances, stay positive and stress the wisdom of your own choices.

The realities of post-work life can be complicated, even fraught. Acknowledge immediately that many people cannot afford to retire. They remain sources of support for aged parents, and for adult children and grandchildren. Many have debts, especially for housing and healthcare. Some provide for a life partner who cannot work or has special needs. Millions of others, upon reaching retirement age, find that they do not have enough savings to transition in the fashion they once imagined.

There are also people who simply do not wish to retire. I had a conversation with a just-retired colleague who was looking forward, with a mix of hope and trepidation, to the next decades of life. Her major concern, however, was her husband who did not want to retire. For many men, work is a symbol of social potency. It affirms their image of themselves as breadwinners. It is a place to go during the day and a center for social relationships. Men with higher-status jobs may have an office and staff to carry out their wishes. At work they are “somebody,” people listen to them. They are earning more than they ever have. Why give that up?

Nevertheless, most of us move into retirement at some point. Few expect that next stage to be as easy as our popular culture holds, that is, endless mornings of sleeping late before heading off to the fishing hole, golf course, art class, or spa. We know there will be challenges to physical and mental well-being, not only for ourselves but also for our friends and families. Financial matters will rear their ugly heads. Death will come, usually before we wish.

For those very reasons, it is important to live this next stage as well as we can. There is no one model for retirement. People’s lifestyles—like their personalities, economic circumstances, and social commitments—will be as varied as they were in their earlier decades. However, there are some basic concerns that all of us should keep in mind as we move forward.

I often stress the importance of four “pathways of experience” that organize our involvement in the world. Those four pathways are work, play, communion, and ritual. These commitments are just as critical to happiness in retirement as they are to pre-retirement satisfaction.

Work. In a previous post (“Why We Must Work”), I stressed that we should not confuse work with paid employment. That pattern of work commonly ends with retirement, though many continue to work part-time. More encompassing than paid employment, work is an active rendering of the world to meet the needs of oneself and others. The “goods and services” workers provide include caring for family members, making meals, fixing leaky faucets, and running errands. We can offer those same skills, developed over a lifetime, to others in the community.

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Once again, it is common to dream of a life at ease. But we need labor of some sort, not just to feel useful but also to be useful to others. Work keeps us focused. It helps us maintain discipline and resolve. It hones our judgment about goals (what to do and not do) and about the allocation of resources. Work in any way you choose; but keep that sense of serious, protracted commitment to projects that are consequential.

Play. A scholar of human play, I am happy to defend my chosen subject. Like work, play keeps us active; it helps us set goals and explore ways to achieve them. Unlike our experiences of work, we feel no compulsion to play. Playful activity has no enduring consequences; neither does it garner practical rewards.

Why then should we create artistically, play sports and games, dance, sing, and tell jokes? The simplest answer is that we do these things because they are “fun,” because we enjoy making action strategies and watching how the environment, including other people, responds to them. The same attitude applies to their schemes toward us. We like exposing ourselves to fate or chance, to see what is under our control and what is not.

However, play is more than fun. Our explorations are ways of learning what is possible in the world, not just generally but personally. Those dreams and schemes, and the various adjustments they entail, keep us sharp. Play encourages curiosity, helps us feel vital, and promotes optimism about future challenges. Play is important to every stage of life, and especially in retirement years.

Communion. Even in an individualistic society like ours, there is an especially dark vision of retirement. It is of an older person living alone, without anyone to care for them. Increasingly isolated, they putter about some confined space until physical and mental disabilities claim them.

Although we treasure our independence, we need interaction with others. Other people serve as sounding boards for our judgments; they give us standards for our behaviors and accomplishments; they obligate us with their demands. Some of us will deny needing, or wanting, these advisements. Still, communicating with others is fundamental to understanding how the world works and to seeing clearly our place within it.

More importantly, there should be people we care for, and who care for us in return. That is, we need connections that transcend individuality. Feeling obligated in this way is not a “problem,” it is the heritage of our species.

I stress the role of other people. However, there are also important connections to other living creatures, like pets or even plants. Their “dependency” on us is a gift, which keeps us disciplined and decent. Retirement should not mean withdrawal from such responsibilities.

Ritual. In a society that prizes creativity and change, who needs ritual? All of us do. Personal rituals (like daily routines) secure us for the next segments of our lives. Social rituals (like greeting customs) stabilize interpersonal connections. Cultural rituals (like patriotic and religious ceremonies) show that we are part of great traditions. We are not alone.

That desire for continuity and orderliness becomes even more important as one ages. The challenge of advanced maturity, as Erik Erikson emphasized, is to see one’s life in this longer view. Rituals provide this context.

Be clear that rituals are more than preservation of the past. Just because we have enduring frameworks, we are able to focus our creativity on issues that matter. Rituals give us platforms of identity, places to begin afresh. As backward glances, they prepare the future.

I offer no specific advice to those retired and retiring. Let everyone make their own choices. Nevertheless, I insist that living, not as existing but as thriving, means moving ahead determinedly and that these four pathways are fundamental to that process of self-realization.