Retirement Talk for Boomers, Seniors, and Retirees

I know: money is important. But is it the only thing that is important? I recently read a study of happiness as it relates to money. Retired folks might want to give this some thought.

I don't want to have any regrets. It takes a certain amount of forward thinking to conclude this. It also takes a certain amount of courage to realize it. Maybe the young man in the coffee shop did the math concerning one thousand months.

We have to learn to be kind, gentle, and compassionate. We are not born possessing these qualities. This thought has been like a brain worm of late. I can't get theme out of my mind. These three qualities would look good on a grave stone.

We don't have to have the biggest house, farm, car or anything else. They may not be the most desirable. As a matter of fact; in many instances small is much better - if not beautiful.

We retired folks have a perfect opportunity to talk to younger people. We have had a lifetime of experiences and education. We have been down many roads; made good choices and bad. We just need to learn how to tell a good story - with a point.

No matter what is scheduled, we go to coffee. It is a social hour for us. When we retired and relocated we took into consideration the distance to restaurants, grocery stores, drug store, book shops and of course, coffee shops. We wanted to be able to walk to all of them. We can, and we do.

Malcom Gladwell, writer for the New Yorker magazine, recently wrote a book where he suggested that if you do anything for 10 thousand hours you can be successful at it. I'm living proof that there are exceptions.

In a recent email to Retirement Talk, John from McLean, Virginia wondered if I could talk a bit about Tai Chi. He exercises regularly, is close to retirement age and feel a bit tense at his work. He wanted to know if I thought Tai Chi might be worked into a routine that might help him.

Maybe the existentialists had it wrong. The real life of the absurd would be if we were to live forever. The idea of accepting our own death is a comforting step to take. It relieves us of youthful misconceptions and philosophical rationalizations that are not as substantial as they earlier seemed.

Modern life demands mobility for education and employment. The family is uprooted. The extended family is a casualty. It all seems pretty academic until it happens to you. Suddenly, one day, it all becomes very personal. What to do?

This is one of the greatest things about retirement. When we are working at going to school or going to work our lives are pretty well filled up. We don't have time or energy to really consider some of the basics of our lives.

Thoughts about increasing demands on our social security system brought a former vision of mine to the surface. Human Touch was the title of my Master’s thesis work. I wrote up a proposal to the State of Alaska for the creation of a program that would benefit seniors, students and society.

When I was a kid my thoughts roamed on to include ideas that when these old people die off we will be left with only people who have been educated to rely on the scientific method and all that it offers. Now I am one of those older people and I read, hear and see things in the press that seem completely out of sync with science and the belief in reason.

Retirement itself involves a degree of risk. We don't know if we will be happy or not. We don't know if we will have enough income to live comfortably. We don't know if we will have enough income to last until our death since we never know how much time we have yet to live.

Retirement allows us time to expand our horizons. New experiences may be closer than we think. You might want to check out your local courthouse and find out what trials are scheduled to start soon. Here is the story of our experience.

We wanted a rig that was relatively safe. We wanted airbags and all of that other fancy stuff. And as well as safety we wanted a bit of comfort. When one decides to take a road trip that could last a few months, comfort becomes important.

Deciding to see America from the road is an easy choice to make when one enters retirement. It’s a big country and to drive around it takes a lot of time; time that most folks don’t have until they retire.

"Why" has to be among the first words we learn. Little children have a way of repeating it over and over until we just wind up saying, "It just is. I don't know why.” It is strange how this simple exchange seems to hold over the years.

Words have a way of sometimes getting us into trouble; take the word waffling. Now that word has a negative connotation. No question about it. However, it might indicate a pause in the mind to consider or think of alternatives.

No wonder that retirement comes as such a shock to the system for many of us. We have never had to really engage our mind independently of family, school or job. It is no wonder that a person can be 60 years old, very well educated, skilled and competent and yet say, "I don't even know who I am. I don't know what I am."

Retirement gives us time to pause with poets both living and dead. We could do worse than spend some time in their world. Poetry has a way of staying with us. It becomes part of our blood. It is concise, meaningful, and nourishing.

There are many ways around the mountain. I guess it is up to each of us to find our own route. We know that without good health life itself disappears. That tells us how important it is when we consider what we are doing with our life on a daily basis. It is always best to put health in first position.

What is the key to keeping healthy in life? There are about as many theories as there are people. The older I get the less attention I pay to all of these "secrets to a long life". What I like are ideas that fit in with what I am already doing.

Conversation depends on sharing some experiences that two or more people can discuss. Retirement presents a different problem. We don't see the same people every day. We don't have common goals. We tend to become isolatos in our own houses.

Imagine retiring and moving to Mexico. Last year I met this guy in Vancouver who was off to join his retired friend in Puerto Vallarta. The friend was living out his retirement dream. He was running a school for dump children at the city dump in Puerto Vallarta.