Retire – to what?

I want to start this piece by thanking Yorkshire Water’s pension scheme and HM Government for creating the conditions that allow me to write the post. Read on…

For many years I have spoken with people looking forward to retiring and for many years I have wondered what the word meant and whether or not I should succumb to thealleged temptations thereof

The first question I have tended to ask those looking forward to retiring is “retiring to what?”. They tend to know what they are retiring from, but the “to what” question is often more challenging. After all, there do seem to be a lot of people in jobs they don’t actively enjoy and I can hardly blame them for wanting to escape – but to what? The question often stumps my clients.

And now it may be stumping me.

Well, for some time friends and colleagues have been asking me if I am retired yet or when I am going to do so – and I have always replied along the lines of “It depends on what you mean by retirement”. After all, I am 66 and drawing both company and state pensions!

One definition of ‘retirement’ that I have used, and the one that seems to make the most sense to me, is the cessation of paid work – the ‘paid’ being important, because digging the garden is work, cooking is work, blogging is work… – and that’s the challenge that I face now. For the first time since I left my employment with Yorkshire Water 17 years ago I have no paid work in my diary. Moreover, I am not very motivated to do much about that. I’m happy to consider anything that comes my way, especially if it is short-term (coaching, training interventions – end of advert), but as we can get by (OK, a bit more than just get by) on my pensions there is not a huge financial incentive.

But the word ‘retirement’ brings baggage with it, as indeed does any word.

There is a folk myth that ‘back in the day’, when ‘men were men’ and physically wore themselves out doing manual labour for 50 years, the average life expectancy after retirement at 65 was around 2 years. (Actually I can’t find much evidence for this, back in the days when the state pension was first introduced  – the first pensions were  paid on 1 January 1909 to around 500,000 people aged 70 or more at the time only one in four people reached the age of 70 and life expectancy at that age was about 9 years.) Current life expectancy at age 65 is ca. 19 years. Now whether this myth is true or not, I can understand that as a piece of baggage it might inhibit some people from making that  jump to retired status – irrational yes but we are not rational beings.

So what other baggage might the word bring with it?

• Feet up in front of the fire, slippers on, pipe lit, glass of whisky in hand, telly blaring out Eastenders…
• or perhaps endless days on the golf course, watching cricket (neither a lot of cop in the winter unless you can afford to migrate to sunnier climes for 10 months of the year)…
• or merrily frittering the day away babysitting those grandchildren who are the offspring of the children you spent so long encouraging to leave home…
• or (over?) involving yourself in the Parish Council and getting frustrated with its inability to actually make any changes…
• or ????

My point is that you are going to be ‘doing’ this retirement thing for, typically, 20 years so it might be worth giving the subject of how you spend those 20 years a bit of forethought. No employer is going to drive your day for you with this project and that, it’s up to you and me to find our own way to enjoy ourselves – for what is the point if we are not enjoying ourselves. I have a sign on our fridge that seems relevant here

“I do not intend to creep quietly through life only to arrive safely at death”

So my question to you, and to myself, is “What are you going to do that fills your soul, that you enjoy, that you will get out of bed for, that you will happily spout on about to your friends, that is your passion?”

Well?