Aging and Retirement

A few years ago at a work meeting a colleague concluded his ‘check-in’ by saying, in the most casual way that, at the age of 52, his best years were behind him. This sparked a variety of reactions including, in me, an emotion I have no word for but is something like a sad anger. Perhaps I was railing against my own mortality or just I didn’t fancy spending the day with Eeyore.

I’ve been reliving this memory recently as I have been designing this next phase of my professional life. I met my now ex-colleague recently and he could not have seemed in better order. Not just mentally and physically, he was positively oozing purposeful energy. I asked him how his new business was doing; his smile told me everything. It was clear to me, and indeed he was happy to confirm it, that the last few years he had found the thing he was born to do and he was now more fulfilled than when he was 52.

What I am interested in here is how I can continue to contribute and serve as I get older and my clients seem to be getting younger. I’ve no desire to retire and actually find the whole concept a little depressing. And so, while recognising I am slowing down and becoming more discerning, I am keen to learn more about the stage of life it feels like I’m entering.

To help me on my way I’ve recently read Come of Age by Stephen Jenkinson. It’s a rambling, colourful, poetic exploration that “makes the case for elderhood in a time of trouble”. You get a taste of both his view and his style in this quote:

“The old among us are regarded – when they are regarded at all – as largely being past and passed by, largely already done. In a culture addicted to potential, the old are potential in collapse, a pile of what could have been and now will never be in the corner, a burden needing upkeep but not sustenance.”

It's a description of the world as Jenkinson sees it and certainly resonates. I’m meeting an increasing number of people in a desperate rush to reach retirement, clinging on to jobs they don’t enjoy, gritting their teeth through today for the promise of a very different life tomorrow. And how do they imagine that life to be? When I ask the question the answer often doesn’t come, or if it does it sounds more like a holiday than a future. I worry. For them and for us.

The word ‘retirement’ doesn’t help. It’s definition includes the words ‘giving up’ (work), and has connotations of withdrawing, reducing or even closing down. I guess it made sense in a time of tough manual work and shorter life spans. But it seems to me that for many people these days retirement might last longer than the career that preceded it. If you add duration to often better health and more wealth then the term ‘retirement’ does not do this stage of life justice. Perhaps I’m just railing against my own impending transition but hope it’s more than that. I’m imagining the vast quantity of experienced, skilled, healthy, materially well-resourced talent being put in the mothballs for twenty or thirty years before the inevitable. It makes me sad.

Back to Jenkinson again. “You age. You are not aged. You are not on the receiving end of age, no matter your belligerence or refusal on the matter. The waning of the body; yes that is what happens to your body, the once-noble conveyance soon enough outworn and not beholden to you or your hankering for more. But you could consider reserving the word aging to describe what you may or may not do while your body gathers it’s growth rings. You could reserve the word to describe something active, and so undertaken, and so determined and decided upon. Not summoned, not controlled. Served.”

I don’t think it has to be like this. We don’t have to accept the path that has been laid out in front of us. We don’t have to conform to the conventions associated with aging and retirement. Perhaps I’ll feel differently as I amble into my sixties but I hope not.

I’ll give the last word to Dylan Thomas.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.