A Three Part Series on the Rites, Rituals, and Routines of Retirement
A brief disclaimer: Just like no two lives are lived the same way, your retirement plans and trajectory, current or future, may not parallel my own. And yes, I am offering some advice in this series based on my own experience and it is purely formative – free to take or leave. What I will say with some certainty is that for those of us who have voluntarily retired, these themes of rites, rituals, and routines are referenced frequently as important keys to not only satisfaction, but an abundance of joy in The Precious Days.
Part One: Retirement as a Rite of Passage
By the time I reached retirement, I had experienced many rites of passage in my life, and recognized their significance. But when I thought about my own retirement, I couldn’t get beyond “I don’t want a party” as the only rite of passage that I’d associate with leaving work for good. Well, I did get a party, but it was neither accompanied by ceremonious clarity, nor a map of what was next, scrolled and tied with a red ribbon. Prepare for that. Reader, I did not.
My lack of mental preparation may have been because I had planned to move right into what I thought would be a “second act” – another career to start a month after leaving the kind of work I had been doing in education for over 40 years. It would be an easy transition, I thought. And although my identity was tweaked a bit, the experience was not transformative. And what followed left me both bewildered and unhappy, and I really didn’t understand why.
It was during that one year stint that I realized I had not fully experienced the long-awaited “rite of passage” because I hadn’t understood what the rite of passage for retirement actually was. I suppose I was seeing the separation as the big event, and then amen, a new life. Separation is part of the rite. I would leave the work world I had known, and enter another work world. I did that, but it was a transition period. And transition can be part of a rite of passage, too. There was a transition in every other rite of passage I experienced. And just like all the other times, the transition was into something somewhat unfamiliar. What was different and so unsettling this time? During those other times, there were usually some familiar relationship or societal markers to help define the process for me. Retirement is different. It is full of cliches, and ageism, and even invisibility. So who would define my new world? Hadn’t it better be me? Umm, well…I hadn’t done that (gulp).
Why these “fails”? What I had done upon my “retirement” was to engage in a continuation of a lifelong process that was pretty familiar…and safe. So here’s my important life lesson: I did this because I felt I HAD to. The chorus of “You can’t retire completely! What are you going to DO?” that drones on in your head as soon as you announce your retirement can be deafening and disconcerting. There are maybe, minimally, three major reasons you will get advice not to retire. The first is quite serious, and a “keep working” motivator for many. It’s that financially, you shouldn’t do it. I feel blessed that I did not have to count that among my reasons not to retire after 40+ years. The second is the people in your own life (as well as out in the world) who equate relevance with a respected position and a substantial paycheck. I get that one, too. And the third group warns, “Don’t retire! It’s a speed boat to the old folks home.” That’s the group really afraid of aging. Yup, aging is full of uncertainty. All three of those camps scared me a bit. They got to me. How would I continue to be relevant? I had thought I wanted to retire, but panic started to set in as it got closer. They’re right! I WILL lose my identity! So, without really thinking things through fully, I allowed my response to my fear to be: WORK.
Reader, for me that was not the right rite of passage into retirement. If I continued to allow “work” to reign supreme in my life, I would be stuck on a wheel of separation and transition and perhaps never experience the life transformation I was longing for. So, as I said, I left that role I held for only one year after “retiring” because I did the inner work, finally, and I knew what kind of transformation I needed to define my life. For me, the true rite of passage was to leave the work world behind and enter The Precious Days. This new world is now defined by me as the time of my life in which I do not work for anyone, but towards things that bring me happiness and peace. It’s a world in which I center the ones I love, live in ways that make the world more beautiful and sustainable, and try to alleviate suffering through empathy, compassion, and activism and by doing what I can to support others in need.
The rite of passage into retirement is not a singular event. It is a series of steps to prepare for the last big phase of your life, which in turn will be filled with new adventures and joyful surprises. And there will be obstacles (like winter for me), but they don’t have to become obstacles to being true to yourself and your well-thought-out, personal vision of retirement.
“The ending of one thing is also the beginning of another. What is the next adventure? There is room enough in this life—with its many endings, its many beginnings—for things you could not have imagined last week or last year or ten years ago. KEEP MOVING.”
In Part Two I’ll focus on the RITUALS of retirement and how I created some that align with my beliefs and values about living The Precious Days. I’d love to hear your thoughts on how you honored (or will honor) your retirement as a “rite of passage.” Feel free to comment below. And if you are a subscriber, remember to check your spam folder for emails from The Precious Days (and mark the blog as NOT SPAM) if you are not receiving updates in your inbox.
