I don’t want to make this sound like something I am obsessing about, but that I did retire from full-time work recently, I have been thinking about both the word “retire,” as well as the process the word brings to mind.
Without dragging in the overly intimidating O.E.D., even in Webster’s Collegiate, we can find some interesting variations of meaning: to withdraw from action or danger; to fall back; to withdraw from one’s occupation; to go to bed; to march away from the enemy; to put out a batter; or to win permanent possession of a trophy. If we left out the baseball reference, without too much effort, a connection of sorts could be made to each of the other definitions, at least metaphorically.
If we were to do a survey of the general population, I suspect we would find a significant percentage of respondents suggesting that anyone able to comfortably retire from the banking industry these days should consider themselves lucky not to be pilloried, or tarred and feathered prior to being sent away for a government-paid internment (retirement).
As I have been mulling over this idea of retirement, and thinking about it in much broader than just human terms, it has struck me that as things, as opposed to people, reach the ends of their productive lives, we have different terms and very different actions related to the retirement process.
Glass, plastic, metal and paper all get recycled, in an initially destructive but eventually restorative process. Housing can be restored or rehabilitated, sometimes morphing from one use to another through a reformative process, creating condominiums and transitional housing.
In some of the wealthier enclaves in Eastern Mass, older, perfectly respectable housing is first destroyed, and then resurrected, not unlike the Phoenix, as McMansions. Similarly, older commercial property is often reimagined or repositioned to newer, grander purpose. An old, closed car dealership morphs into a new CVS. An aging, ugly, old multiplex theatre morphs into upscale shopping at Legacy Place in Dedham. An old jail can be transformed into an elegant hotel (Boston) or upscale condominiums (Dedham). The general observation that arises from this train of thought is evident in the language. Would we, as human beings, feel better about our retirements if we thought about our later years in terms of recycling, restoration, rehabilitating and reimagining?
It seems to me that we spend a lot more time thinking creatively about the retirement and eventual reuse of things than we do with our lives. We are typically staying healthier and living longer than retirees did 20, 30 and more years ago. If we have accumulated anything approximating wisdom over the first two-thirds of our lives, wouldn’t it be nice to put it to some constructive purpose? Golf, tennis, travel and other self-indulgences are the rewards we can garner for a life of hard work, but the gift of ourselves, in helping some individuals or causes, that allow someone else to eventually improve their lives is the reinvestment that will pay us our greatest return. Mary Oliver sums it up very nicely in “When Death Comes,“ when she writes:
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
Get involved. Reinvent yourself into that better someone you always intended to be. Make a difference.
