NOTE: A good tennis buddy Julio Cabral and I are both approaching retirement age as public school teachers. We are trying to help each other transition from the world of work to the mindset of the retired. I have done considerable research on this, and I know it can be difficult. Change, even positive and necessary change, can have its stressful aspects. One seeks to manage change, not be managed by it. The first year of retirement can be a real challenge for many.
So my friend and I read together “The New Old Age” by David Brooks and decided to take the advice from this article about preparing to retire by writing about who you used to be, who you are now, and who you wish to be after retirement. Here are my responses which I will share with my tennis buddy. I will listen to his answers. Then we will discuss. We will seek to understand what is happening to us, and to make wise decisions.
Enjoy my words in this spirit, dear reader.
WHO I WAS?
I was born to Margaret Mary Gibbons and Dick Geib in 1967. My parents met through their mothers who were friends from the same local Catholic church, and they were married in 1965. My parents were educated and attractive, and they came from money, more or less: it was an auspicious start. But two weeks after his wedding my father, an officer in the US Army at the time, was sent away from his new bride to fight in the Vietnam War. My dad was mostly miserable as a soldier in the dangerous and damp jungles of Indochina, but he says he would daydream about getting out of there alive and becoming a father. My dad survived the deployment and I was born almost nine months to a day after he returned from overseas. I lived my first few years in the Bay Area of California, but then our family moved to the suburbs of Milwaukee, Wisconsin where I spent the next several years. I am the oldest child, and I have a younger brother and sister, also.
From the present I look back at my childhood and this is what resonates with me: memories of sports and books. I remember voraciously reading the entire Hardy Boy detective series of books in second grade. I would read secretly in my closet with a flashlight when my parents insisted I go to sleep. I handled the Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy by fifth grade, and the experience seemed nothing less than transformative. I loved to read and, along with my family, it helped shaped who I became. But if weather permitted I would prefer to be outdoors playing baseball, football, tennis, or whatever. I wanted to be out with my buddies playing pickup basketball or riding our bikes. I wanted to run and sweat and be active. I feel sorry for boys nowadays who grow up staying indoors by themselves and playing videogames and staring at screens all day long. I wanted to be outside with my friends. My childhood was as full of ups and downs as most are, but I was safe and loved. I learned. I grew.
I was far from a perfect child. I sometimes needed correction from my parents. I performed ill-advised acts which I regret to this day. My dad was the disciplinarian, and I am forever grateful that he was highly skilled at being both stern and strict while at the same time gentle and forgiving. I knew my father was the leader in the family and I understood the rules, so I rarely felt the need to test him or them. But if my parents were clearly in charge, I never lived in fear of them. They were not capricious authority figures. With high expectations came unconditional love and continual support. If growing up is easy for nobody, my parents did not make it harder for me than need be. I later came across many adults who were horrible parents, and I understood how lucky I was in mine. To this day I am grateful.
At the beginning of fourth grade my family moved back to the West Coast. We were California people, not Wisconsin people. My mom was especially relieved to be nearer to family and to live in a more temperate climate. I have lived ever since in Southern California.
Heraclitus said that “character is destiny,” an assertion I often think about and agree with. My temperament was cast by the age of 13, maybe even from earlier in childhood or birth. What does this mean in practical terms? As a teenager I was a dedicated athlete and a serious student. I loved to read and think. I spent my best moments exploring classic literature and dramatic moments from history. I was given the best social studies student award at my middle school. Socially, I was a bit of an introvert. I had fewer rather than more friends, but those friends were solid. My friends from adolescence are still among my best friends four decades later. Girls scared the bejesus out of me, and I was late in learning to navigate the opposite sex.
As I approached 18-years of age I was a competitive runner and devoted martial artist. I graduated high school and moved to Los Angeles to go to college. I joined a college fraternity. There were serious girlfriends. I fell in and out of love and made a muddle of things generally. I grew up. I learned to take responsibility for myself. By age 27 I was fully launched into adult life, more or less. I dabbled in pursuing a career in law enforcement but found a better fit as a classroom teacher. I spent my best hours at work for many years as an educator from this time onward. This was a vocation to me: the life of the mind, and trying to inspire students. I won awards on the job. I also worked for a decade as an adjunct professor training new teachers in graduate school. This is what I did for the better part of a decade: I worked. I did little else. It was my raison d’etre. I woke up ready to teach. I went to sleep thinking about lesson plans. I was young and ambitious professionally. Success for me was success in the workplace. This was my life at the time.
I got married at 36. My wife Maria and I had our first child when I was 39. We ended up having two beautiful daughters, a development which both exhausted me to no end and helped give meaning and direction to my life. I was a bit of an older dad, a predicament which had both its pros and cons. I did nothing but change diapers and grade essays for several years, in addition to working that second job as a professor. I grow exhausted just thinking about being so busy and overwhelmed as I was then. It was an era of heavy lifting; but I got it done. The years they passed; I entered middle age. I began to approach retirement age. My daughters were on the verge of starting college and pursuing their own independent adult lives.
I still want to do the best I can with the students in front of me. But I learned to draw a line after which I would not work. No more work weeks of 50- to 60-hours which left me frazzled and exhausted. I would not let my job responsibilities crowd out friendships and exercise and family. When I was 35, I felt I had something to prove in the world of work. By the time I was 55 I recognized that while work was important it was far from everything. Work would be one aspect of my life, and not the most important one. I would keep my sense of perspective, as I grew jaded about the public school system. I pursued passion projects which would take my best energies and hours. I would not be an absentee father because of work. Who looks back on their deathbed and wishes they had spent even more time and energy at work?
So somewhere in midlife I made a conscious decision. I would be more than my paycheck and job title, much more. I would not ask more from my job than it could deliver. I would diversify. Nobody is made “happy” and “fulfilled” by their career, not really. So I did not have the entire edifice centered on the sole support of work. There were many different pylons holding up my life: literature, history, writing, the Spanish language, tennis, martial arts, firearms, family, friends, travel. Much of that informed my vocation of teaching, directly or indirectly, but much of my hobbies had nothing to do with my job. I was more than what I did during the workday Monday through Friday. Much more. There were periods in my life when I focused almost exclusively on succeeding in the workplace. No longer.
WHO AM I NOW?
I have my job (teaching). I do it (as well as I can). In four or so years I will retire with a full pension. The clock is ticking towards the end.
So I feel as if I am on the downslope with work. I have proved what I have to prove to myself and the world. My interests in the education sector, business world, or political arena are diminishing. I don’t care. Or I don’t care much. Let others busy themselves with affairs of this world. I am in retreat. My concerns are individual and interior, not collective or political. I am moving inward as I age. My time passes. Let the next generation rise.
There was a crucial moment sometime around 2017. I went to my Facebook social media account and deleted almost every work contact I had from it. In this move I wiped away twenty years of my professional nexus. With a few exceptions, I would not fraternize with work connections. Work was work and home was home. I would pursue my non-work friendships and hobbies with more passion. I would focus freshly on the future.
Then there was tennis. In middle-age I returned to the childhood sport which I had loved so much. I had hardly hit a forehand in thirty years, but having grown up with the sport the memory of the strokes were still there somewhere in my neural pathways. So I came back to my childhood passion for tennis. I made a serious study of it. The sport came back to me and my body adapted. I became a standout player over time in the local USTA leagues, negotiating injury while getting in excellent physical condition. I also acquired solid tennis friendships, and I could satisfy my need for exercise with the need for community and friendship through the sport. I invested huge amounts of time and energy into tennis. I loved it. After almost a decade I finally became a USTA ranked “5.0” tennis player.
I strained to play at that high level while I age and my body began to break down. It was a delicate balancing act trying to play enough to maximize my potential competitively, without getting hurt or injuring my joints permanently. This was no simple balancing act. (Quick question: Is it a natural act to sprint on concrete whilst in one’s mid fifties?) But I was perhaps happiest on the court playing tennis and enjoying a beer afterwards with my buddies. Was the exercise more important, or were the friendships? Who can say? But it not so different in 2024 than it was back in 1975. I had changed but I had not changed. There it was: the conflict between Heraclitus and Parmenides. Over many decades I had changed. And I had not changed. Is that a paradox? Is it impossible? Maybe it’s a paradox. But it’s far from impossible.
I even returned to the martial arts, an activity which I loved now as much as I did then. There was something about the philosophy of the fighting arts of Asia which had always spoken powerfully to me. As both a teenage boy and a man approaching retirement, the stoic message of self-mastery and sober humility hit home. Maybe this says more about me than about them. But here again was the paradox: Everything had changed for me over 40 years. And nothing had changed. Heraclitus and Parmenides, change versus continuity. Sometimes I looked back and it seemed an eternity had lapsed since I was a boy. Other times it seemed like hardly any time had passed at all. Just yesterday I was a boy, I felt. But then I remembered how much had happened over so many long years as a man. By now my life consisted not so much of many years, but of several different eras of life consisting of many years. I was 56 years old. Snap my fingers and I would be 66. Then 76. The same will happen to you, esteemed reader.
As I got older my aging body was something I watched. I ate healthily and drank little alcohol. I had never done any illegal drugs ever, as they just scared me. I got enough sleep. My vices were relatively few and mostly benign. Overall, I was healthy as I traveled through late middle age. But my body was not the same, and neither was my mind. I mellowed as I aged. “Ego is the enemy,” I reminded myself constantly. I shake my head at young men who are willing to throw away so much in a pique of anger. The levels of testosterone in my body were much lower than they used to be. One friend urged me to take testosterone injections to combat this, but I thought about it and decided against it. I would age as gracefully and naturally as I could. I would seek to manage the change in my body and life. There would be pros and cons to being in your fifties, and I would ride with the tide, not fight it. Young men think they will live forever. Anyone approaching 60 knows that is not true. A person becomes grateful to have what they have for as long as it lasts, or at least this is what happened with me. That is one of the reasons I am so much happier now than I was at 25 or 35-years of age. I seem to be mostly riding the upside of the famous “U-shaped happiness” curve – and that is no small silver-lining to the sometimes harsh reality of aging.
Next year my youngest daughter will be a high school freshman. The plan is to teach until she graduates in 2028 and then retire. She will leave my school and I will, too. At that time I will be 60-years old with 34 years on the job. That will have been enough – more than enough. Time for something different. I look forward to the next stage of my life. In fact, I am ready now. I just have to wait four more years. I am on the downwards slope of work and child raising. I am in late middle age.
WHO WILL I BE?
So in a handful of years, I will retire from the workplace. The money should work out, and I will be free from the need to labor for a paycheck in order to pay for my upkeep. That will be a great blessing. I won’t be rich, but I should have enough. I am long accustomed to living a semi-frugal life, so the autumn of my life should be comfortable, if not extravagant. I have for many decades lived within my means this way. I am used to it. I hope to spend my time and energy on learning and exercising, and while these endeavors have costs they are not exorbitant.
The costs come from the time and energy – the blood, sweat, and tears – which are required. Money is not the determinative factor, thankfully, for most of what a person needs most of the time, in my experience. It is self discipline and right intention. (The motto on my cell phone cover perhaps explains much about me.) I am mostly immune to all the exhortations of the consumer economy that suggests a person needs this material thing or another to be happy. I recognize that almost all of the clever marketing in capitalism to separate a person from his money is nonsense. I abjure trends in clothing fashion or new automobiles, if I even know about them. I think three or four times on it and wait some more before I buy anything of consequence. There is an abstemious streak to my character, even as it always costs more than you think to live. We shall see, but I doubt I shall ever want for money. I should be able to focus on things other than a paycheck. In short: I will be retired.
But if “abstemious” with myself and lifestyle as a retiree, I hope I will never be stingy with my consideration and affection for family and friends. I must guard against becoming a crabby old man. I have noticed a brittle contrariety in most of the elderly I have known, and it is probably endemic to that season in life; but it is unpleasant to witness, and I hope that is never me. Or at least I will consciously fight against the tendency. I hope to keep a certain softness and openness to everyone and everything I encounter. Even with age and experience, I want to be able to look out at the world with the eyes of a child. I want to continue to grow my soul by adding to ongoing writings of my website, as I have done with pleasure for decades. I hope to continue to adapt, learn, and grow, rather than shrink inwardly into rigidity, resentment, and despair. Even in the throes of terminal physical decline, I hope to retain the mindset of the novice. Is that impossible?
I suspect it might largely be an effort of will. Don’t let yourself go, Richard. Not even at the end. To give up on everyone and yourself, and to be unwilling or too tired to learn something new – ah, that is the real end. Fight against that until you have no strength left with which to fight.
But let me be more specific? How exactly will I spend my days? As I get ready for the final stage of my life, the question becomes. “Who will I be in retirement?” I should have 20 or 30 years of life left. What should I do with my time? How should I spend the precious life energy I have left?
I have plans. I am optimistic. Let me explain.
I suspect retirement for me will be less difficult than it has for some others because I already have my job in a subordinated position. I spoke about this earlier. I have hobbies. I have friends. I have interests. I have plans. I will not miss most aspects of my job. I have noticed many men who are married to their jobs and defined by their work…. well, they struggle when work ends. One reads the stories of men who die a year or two after retirement – individuals who seem to just fall apart – and it is concerning. I don’t want to be that guy. A math teacher I know told me he would never retire, as he would not know what to do with himself afterwards. I thought to myself he needed a larger imagination about what life had to offer him outside of his math classroom. As Shakespeare’s Friar Lawrence once told an exiled Romeo, “The world is wide and broad.” Metaphorically and literally, one should travel and explore, no? And do so before you are too old to do it? Work all the way until the day you die? No, thank you.
I have seen up close my father and all the others of his generation as they aged. A healthy person in their 60s is good to go for just about anything. People in their 70s are also able to enjoy most of what anybody else can enjoy. But then in the 80s a person begins to occupy a more precarious position: things can go south whenever, and you should be happy with whatever health you have while you’ve got it. And you will want to make arrangements for long-term care and whatnot when you can’t live alone and take of yourself, a situation which could happen anytime. If you are still alive in your 90s… well, you are mighty lucky. You are living on borrowed time. Enjoy whatever is left for as long as possible. There definitely is such a thing as living too long.
So I have probably a decade or two of healthy living.
What to do?
Or as the original question asks, “Who will I be?”
This is what I don’t want: a super-stressful job which gets my blood pressure dangerously elevated and leaves me bone tired. There is some CEO of a large company somewhere who is so frazzled on almost an hourly basis with the many cares and pressures of work that he is going to keel over and die of a heart attack or a stroke sooner rather than later.
Instead I want peace. I want quiet. I want to do what I want to when I want.
I should have that.
What I don’t want to do?
I don’t want to do nothing.
My dad retired at 55 years of age and did a lot of nothing for some 30 years. He was an accomplished attorney for some 30 years. He worked hard and raised a family. But my dad grew tired of it all and had no apologies for retiring when he did. But I asked him what he did all day and he replied, “I’m not sure. It just takes me a long time to eat breakfast and brush my teeth in the morning.”
In my opinion, my father was damaged by going from a full time worker to doing nothing so abruptly. He still had more to offer the world. My father was a little bored. A little too isolated too early in life. It was to his detriment. True, my dad traveled. A recent widow, he dated. He eventually re-married. But he withdrew from the world of work too entirely too early. In my opinion, he wasted too much time. He would have been better served with less leisure time. It is not bad to have somewhere to be by a definite hour.
So I will hope to avoid my father’s mistake. Only a fool learns from his own mistakes, as Bismarck tartly observed. A wise man learns from the mistakes of others.
Why can I not work part-time? Or volunteer? Keep one finger in the world of work, one finger in the world of retirement?
I can substitute teach occasionally. Or I can read “Where the Red Fern Grows” or “Harry Potter” to third graders in my wife’s classroom. I have been reading literature to my own daughters and high school students forever! I enjoy it. I am good at it. Humans are storytelling creatures, and I am sure young people would appreciate the elderly gentleman who reads stories to them on Tuesdays and Thursdays after lunch for an hour. I can become a positive fixture in the classroom, one that kids can trust. I would enjoy that.
Or I have thought about volunteering for the local DA’s Office as a volunteer victim’s advocate. For some 10-15 hours a week I could help people fill out restraining orders, or do what I can to help grieving crime victims. I can be of service. I can try to help where I can when I can. Why not? I should have the time. It is something I can learn to do. I am educated. I am bilingual. I can be patient. I am willing. I’ll work for free.
This is what I want in this next “retirement” era of life: I want to retain powerful and meaningful friendships and connections with other people, and I want to do meaningful work and help others. I would hope to do this in a way which is manageable and healthy for my age and station in life. My efforts and results might be modest, which would be fine. This would not be a stressful job 40 hours a week. I won’t want to “change the world,” as if that were ever possible. But neither would I be sitting at home all day long staring at the walls. Something between being fully retired and fully employed. I would try to find Aristotle’s “Golden Mean.” And I could adjust from there, depending on how it goes. It won’t primarily be about making money, and I don’t want to work too hard or too much. Before I retired I was 100% working, and in the first decade of retirement I want to go to 50%, and then as I approach my eighties I can go 0%.
That is the plan, at least. We shall see what happens. As Mike Tyson claims, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” I might get sick and decline sooner rather than later. There are no guarantees. But I hope for several decades of health before the inevitable arrives.
But all this is what I plan to do. Who will I be? Deep down, how will I see myself? That is a perhaps harder question.
But I have some tentative answers.
I will be who I have always been. History and literature. Reading and thinking. Tennis. Martial arts. Road biking. Swimming laps in the pool. Sweat and exertion. I shall exercise vigorously every morning, and then get lunch and a nap. Then I will have a gentle workout again in the early evening, and thereby earn my dinner’s appetite and good night’s sleep. There will be books, reflection, and writing. (Just as I am doing in this essay, a person never really knows what they think or feel until they take the time and trouble to write it down.) I hope to travel some. I will pay attention to politics and world events, without obsessing over them. I will tend to my family and my friendships. I will preserve my peace of mind. I will be grateful for whatever the day offers. I will appreciate the gift of life. I will endure what I must endure. I will show courage. I will age with grace and die with dignity, as much as I can.
That is who I hope to be.
This is what I look for in my future.
After 2028. When I am retired.
I remind myself that it is a bit early for all this. I still have four or so years of work left. I have some heavy-lifting to do parenting-wise before my daughters start college and leave home.
But four years is not so much time. I sometimes think by this point in my life I can almost hold my breath for four years. Four years back was the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. January 2020 seems like just yesterday. When you are a kid four years takes an eternity to complete. Later in life four years pass by in almost a snap of the fingers. So I suspect these last four years until retirement will go by quickly. Four years is nothing, I reflect. But it is also a long time to hold one’s breath. Patience, Richard. It will arrive.
And I will be ready. The process of retiring seems to me an undertaking by which a person learns to be ready for change, and also for loss. Much might be gained in retirement, but much will be lost. That is the way it works. You cannot deny change, only manage it. And to live in denial of change means to fail to manage it effectively and then to suffer as a consequence – I have seen this often with those who age. Remember this lesson, Richard.
They say that the first year of retirement is the hardest. As I mentioned, many men do not survive the loss of their workplace, as it gave them most of their purpose in life and social connection to others. They don’t transition well to retirement.
I hope to transition well. Which is why I have taken the time to write this essay.
And why I will read these words to my friend Julio who is in a similar situation as myself. And I will hear his experience and thoughts, too. We will seek to work through it together. These important questions –
Who was I in the past?
Who am I today?
Who will I be in the future?
