So I just turned 57-years old.
I wish I were 58. Or 61.5 years of age, more specifically.
Speed up the years!
Why?
Because I could retire then.
I am in the final full flush of my career: meshing decades of hard won experience while still being young enough to put in the exhausting work which successful classroom teaching is. I can hit all cylinders and direct a class full of ambitious smart teens like nobody’s business. I’m not done yet. I’m still engaged at work. That is one side of the coin.
But the other side is that I am ready to try something new. For over three decades I have been teaching in college and high school, and for over half that I was also raising my two daughters. Years and years of being the economic engine (along with my wife) for myself and my family, and years and years of being responsible for the formation and safety of infants who would have starved without me. Nobody is more overwhelmed than new parents trying to keep a baby fed and napped, or preventing a toddler from mindlessly running out into the busy roadway or falling into a jacuzzi and drowning. But now my two daughters are on the verge of becoming young adults with independent lives of their own. The years they have passed. The sometimes overwhelming pressures of parenting begin to ebb, or at least I can see that happening soon. But I look back at having newborn babies in the house, to the parking lot hell at Poinsettia Elementary School, to coaching their sports teams and reading endless books to my daughters — and it was a lot. I also had a difficult job teaching high school during the day, and I taught college part-time at night. I get tired just thinking about it.
I don’t want to seem like I am complaining. Many (most?) adults work their fingers to the bone raising children, supporting themselves, and building a career. I am far from unique in this. I paid my way through life and worked hard to get to where I am today; and I did my best to give my daughters loving and enriching upbringings. They are thriving, and so am I, more or less. This is what people, or at least most people, do as adults.
But as I look at going into my sixties, I want something else.
I want something different. I want to have my time back. I am deathly tired of obligations to do all sort of things for other people. This sense of being “over-busy” is incredibly grinding over the long-term. I want peace and tranquility. I want to own my own time, or at least most of it. I want not only my weekends free but my weekdays, too. So I want to retire. I want my freedom.
I fully understand that too much freedom can be a bad thing. With every freedom a person enjoys, there is a concomitant responsibility. Snow me a person totally free from his links to others, and I will show you a recluse “shut-in,” a loner with no friends, or some homeless person. None of these is likely to be happy. Plenty of people languish because they have too little, not too much, connection to the workaday world of commerce and care. The Greek philosopher Diogenes pursued a life of almost total freedom: he didn’t give a shit about anyone or anything, and the world was half-impressed and half-horrified by him. But this much is clear: few would want to emulate Diogenes. So let me clarify: In the last decades of my life, I wish to retain my family and friendships but retreat from the workplace. I want to retire. I want to be free from the day-to-day obligations of a salaried full time job. On Monday morning when most are at their posts, I want to be otherwise.
I am lucky in this. I recognize plenty of my peers approaching old age cannot afford to retire. They will be working until almost the day they die. Or they will get sick or be “downsized,” and thus be involuntarily retired. I read an article the other day that claimed many older Americans were way too optimistic in terms of how long they would work before they got sick or were fired – before they aged out of the workforce, voluntarily or not. The good news was that the retirees were often happier afterwards, despite everything, than they were when they were working. They were alright. It turned out OK.
A person might spend the first 25 or so years of their life growing up and getting an education. Then they might spend three or four decades working and raising a family: the “heavy lifting” years. Then, if they were lucky, they can spend the autumn and winter of their lives retired. Some are miserable in this final stage of life – resentful of what happened earlier in their lives. Others are happy and fulfilled – enjoying the fruits of all they had built up. I hope to be in the latter group. Grateful for what I have. Satisfied with how I pursued my career. Surrounded by my family and friends. Enjoying all the skills I developed since I was a child towards being a healthy and happy human being – to be comfortable in my own skin and to enjoy my days, as much as I can.
That is no easy task. But it is an achievable one. Time, patience, discipline, hard work, a bit of good luck – that all helps. Contentment in life is so often an earned state of mind developed over time. But there are so many who have little or no contentment, despite all the years (or because of all the years?).
Here I am completing 57 years of life, having done the best I could.
So wish me luck in my 58th journey around the sun, dear reader.
Happy birthday to me!
