Nearing the end of my first full month of retirement, I decided to take a trip. Sounds a bit cliché, but my sister and her spouse are spending the winter in Mexico and asked me to come down. I scheduled a week in the sun, far from phones and the slight turmoil of transitioning from work. I figured this was perfect timing – a great way to leap to the opposite side of this work/life equation once and for all.
Well, I walk faster than everyone in Mexico. It became apparent the moment I sprinted off the plane and dashed headlong into the vacation. I never seemed to get into the easy-peasy slow gate of a fully relaxed person, even when I was strolling along the beach. The waves would swell up and lick at my ankles, swarming me with their enticement to just plain stop and look up. My sister was well established in the slower pace, sauntering so leisurely behind me that I had to keep repeating myself because she kept slipping too far away to hear me.
Finally she would suggest we stop at one of the little beachside cafes, which allowed me to occupy myself with studying the menu and wondering if the staff had sanitized the table properly. Don’t get me wrong – I loved our visit and am really glad I went on the trip. But I found myself wondering, frequently, what it was going to take for me to actually slow down – physically and mentally. A month into retirement hadn’t yet accomplished it. Maybe I needed to do some meditations on being calm, I thought. But… I am calm. I’m calm and happy and engaged in what I’m doing every single day… I just happen to be doing it all at a slightly faster pace than I anticipated still being in at this point.
I’m not sure why the days in retirement come under such scrutiny, as though we are all meant to be assimilated into some sort of zombie headspace as we join the masses in a slow saunter of people with nothing to do. I’m all about relaxing and having fun… and accomplishing tasks. Many tasks and at a brisk pace. I’ve always been like that and I’m not sure why I thought I would become someone different. I am the same person I was at five, at 25, at 50. I’ve always planned my days to contain all the things of life.
It brought to mind Robert Fulghum’s wonderful 1986 book ‘All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten’. He writes: “Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some… Take a nap every afternoon.”
Now THAT, I think, is a perfect retirement.
Photo by Zack Minor on Unsplash