Meaning

Meaning

by Marco M. Pardi

“To translate meaning into life…..is to realize the TAO”

Carl G. Jung. (1875-1961)

I think one of the most challenging, and least prepared for aspects of retirement is finding meaning in everyday life. No one cares if I don’t show up for work. In fact, they would probably send me away. No one cares if I get up late….well, maybe my dog would register his dismay. So awakening is met with a question: What to do today? Perhaps, on a thoughtful day, that question will trigger another: Will it matter?

A few days ago Dana (you know Dana from her participation in these discussions, always brilliant, always eagerly anticipated) started a group email venture called A Positive Thought for the Day. As several people quickly joined in with contributions I watched for a while, giving myself time to form an impression. I was surprised by how positive my impression was, even if I can’t always come up with something positive.

But looking at today is hard to do without looking at yesterday. What were my yesterdays like, and were they positive, negative, or some mix of the two? Do they still affect my today? How often have you heard someone say, “When I was {working} at….or When I was {fill in a position no longer held}” and they went on about that every time you encountered them? You want to say, That’s gone. Get over it.

Yet there is an undeniable element of past achievements and lifelong devotion to a vocation which hovers over each retired day just as surely as old photographs and awards on the mantle piece. I have few photographs, for obvious reasons, but I have an endless supply of awards – in boxes.

My life has been dominated by Learning, Doing, and Teaching. In the two, and sometimes three simultaneous careers I had my Learning was partly for enjoyment and largely for better abilities at Doing. My Doing was often exhausting but usually it seemed worth it. My Teaching was partly for the joy of seeing the lights come on, partly to enable people to choose among alternatives, partly to enable them to avoid mistakes, and partly for the humans and non-humans who should one day benefit from people who learned something. But I firmly reject the I have the right answer and you don’t, so listen up approach in so much teaching. I always preferred the I found that learning was fun and I think you will too approach.

Most of that has changed now. Oh, I still learn continuously. I average a serious book per week and watch science programs. But I catch myself asking myself Why. I something meaningful if I don’t pass it on? Before now I failed to recognize how much of the joy I felt in learning was the anticipation of sharing that learning with someone else and seeing them light up with the joy of discovery. I have hoped that at least some of the posts I’ve put on this blog site were opportunities for someone to learn something and to enjoy thinking about it perhaps differently. Again, I don’t for a moment presume to have the answers, but I do hope to stimulate the questions. This is why the comments sections of these posts are so very important. I know what I say; without your comments I don’t know how you react.

Doing is a bit tougher to deal with. Frankly, I never gave much thought to what I would be doing in retirement. One of my careers is described as that from which one never retires. That may have influenced my habit of ignoring questions regarding post retirement activity. I don’t play golf, shuffleboard or other such games; my Doing left me a bit damaged for much physical activity of that kind. I can’t stand cards.

I recently gave almost all my SCUBA gear to my daughter though I could still do some snorkeling if I want to drive forever to get to a suitable beach. But I admit I don’t like the idea of kenneling my elderly dog. I want the time I have left with him and he is no longer a good traveler. And, after a lifetime of traveling it holds little appeal to me.

So all this makes me wonder sometimes what the still working people envision for their retirement years, and how they adjust when, as is so often the case, things just aren’t as they expected. During many of my travels I took the time to go into houses of worship dedicated to the Western God: churches, temples, mosques. I very much enjoy the architecture whereas American Protestant churches, with their converted warehouse appearance, are not aesthetically pleasing.

Invariably, the local lore was that one would find, especially in the churches, most of the old women of the area. I don’t know if I saw most but I did see many. I learned that it was common for these women to come every day and spend most of the day there. Why? What was meaningful to them? The easy answer, especially since so many of them were dressed in black, was they were praying for predeceased loved ones.

Easy answer. No doubt they were. But I suspect that, having found little to nothing meaningful in their everyday life they placed themselves in an environment in which it was easy to displace to another cognitive state. It was easy to “get away from here” even if the destination was only imaginary.

In an earlier post I mentioned a woman who came to me when she became eligible for federal retirement. Divorced, childless and alone, she was afraid to retire as she saw nothing before her. I told her to take some of her personal leave or sick days (she was sick of the job) and go to various groups that meet during the days. She was to interview them, not the other way around, because in effect she would be retaining some of them in performing a service for her: putting meaning in her retirement days. She did. She happily retired.

But notice something: “She”. I am curious to read comments from readers who have examined their local newspapers or whatever other social media they have to see if they, too, find that daytime groups are overwhelmingly female oriented. Okay, men historically have tended to drop dead not long after retirement. But, still. More of us men keep waking up each morning, albeit it with a WTF am I still doing here attitude.

Years ago I lived in Florida, known locally as “God’s waiting room”. In all my travels I’ve never seen so many liquor stores per square mile as in Florida. The city of St. Petersburg could have adopted a logo of an upright corpse on a park bench. Activity, in a climate which excitingly alternated between hot and humid and humid and hot, seemed geared toward tourists, not locals.

But other States, though they differ in climate and activities, are not much different from Florida when it comes to meaningful retirement years, especially for men. So it comes down to a principle I’ve tried to live by: Make your own meaning. And, if no one can figure out your meaning, well, too bad.

That’s all very nice, but it can sure be solitary. But please do not assume I’m writing this stuff with the hope someone will suggest a meaningful activity for me. I’ve had several days in which I’ve thought I should go back to work so I could get some rest. In the meantime, I’m keeping Dana’s suggestion front and center. For me, a positive thought, a good thought, is a meaningful thought. And, if nothing else, I’m glad to have the group with which I can share it.