Okay, we’re two weeks into retirement and I’m hearing phantom text pings going off in the night. I’m accustomed to sleeping with my cell phone charging right beside me on my nightstand, having been one of the first people on an emergency contact list for work for the last decade and a half. Fortunately for me, the phone only alerted me to a situation three or four times during that whole timespan. So why was I hearing my text now, when it virtually didn’t ever go off then and literally isn’t going off now? Whatever the reason, it’s waking me up only to discover the dark phone sitting quietly, mockingly, beside me.
It likely wouldn’t take my therapist too long to diagnose classic letting-go symptoms. Maybe the stress of being responsible on the chain of command for all that time was finally taking its toll. I didn’t lose a bunch of sleep waiting for the phone to go off. It really just sat silently throughout the night, throughout the years. It’s still doing the same thing, so it hadn’t changed. Had I?
What if I had underestimated the inner chaos that retirement would cause? I mean, thinking my phone is going off is waking me up, but I haven’t even brought myself to unplug it and leave it in another room. Or throw it out the window. What if I would need even more therapist appointments to get through this transition, as I had so many other transitions (and bumps and hiccups) through the years. But this time the sessions wouldn’t even be covered by benefits. Oh, I could talk myself into a whole host of bad things that were about to befall me.
But… this is part of the reason I do yoga. I started years ago to keep my quick temper in check, quiet my inner chatter and feel the joy of life. Check! Then I came to really adore the feeling of joy – yoga provided a certain bliss for me. That’s what I would do, I told myself. I would clear all of life’s busyness to ensure I got to my new yoga class – 50+ Yoga, in fact, although there are a few cheating young-ins there. Oh well, in yoga everyone is welcome and accepted, and it would surely be just what I needed to clear my mind of all phantom text pings once and for all.
I even got to the yoga studio early and garnered a coveted spot along the back wall. Rolled out the ole mat and was settling into a quiet cross-legged meditation before class began, when out on the floor there arose such a clatter I nearly sprang from my mat to see what was the matter. It was a text ping. A teeny weeny sound that drilled its way from someone’s yoga bag to the very depths of my soul. Which made me: 1) quickly remind myself that my initial reason for starting yoga nearly 20 years ago was to keep my temper in check and that perhaps I needed to do that STAT; and 2) realize that retirement, this land of golden years, is no different from the land I trod on all along. There were distractions and disappointments and people who forgot to turn their cell phones off, just like before. Retirement is just life.
Photo by Akshar Dave🌻 on Unsplash