Are You Happily Retired?
Retired, I’ve decided, is an attitude. It’s a state of mind — a state of equanimity. And you can have that state of mind whether you’ve clocked your last forty-hour work-week — or you’re still holding down a job.
I’m still working. I spend several days a week slogging away at my writing. I used to insist to friends and family that, no, I’m not retired.
A couple of years ago, however, I realized that, although I’m acting like a hard-working working person, I’m thinking and feeling like that proverbial retired guy contentedly watching the world go by from his rocking chair on the front-porch .
So — how do you know when you’ve achieved that equanimous, happily retired, rocking-chair state of mind?
Take the quiz:
1. Have You Mastered the Art of Doing Nothing?
Retired means that you have reacquainted yourself with the art of doing nothing, a skill you lost right around the time you entered adulthood. This means that when your spouse, hard at work on the New York Times crossword puzzle (the Sunday one), throws out a word: “Five letters beginning with SPR, ‘Big name in lean dieting,’” you stop in your tracks.
Instead of telling him you’re too busy, you’ve got to load the dishwasher and get started on your income taxes (and you do have to do both those things), you pause and take a guess, “Sprat?’
“Yes!” he says. Then he adds, “Good one,” because he, like you, has mellowed over the years and doesn’t mind throwing a compliment your way.
2. Have You Ditched Ambition?
Retired means that you’re not ambitious any more. You’ve managed to lose your ambition. Wasn’t easy losing it, but you managed to quit thinking of everything you do in terms of where it’s going to get you on the professional ladder, vis-a-vis your colleagues and competitors.
You no longer have to do this or that or anything else to achieve your lifetime goals. You’ve achieved your goals, and if you haven’t achieved them, you’ve jettisoned them and you’re totally good with that.
3. Is There Food on the Table?
Before he died, Jon and I managed to squirrel away enough money so that I can easily make it to age 90, or 100 even, without hitting up the kids for grocery money.
Which means that I don’t have to do anything productive anymore. Like generations of retirees before me, I am truly and amazingly free of the preoccupation that has dogged human beings since the beginning of time (and the time clock) — survival.
Ironically, embracing that freedom can be tough for the very people who have lucked out and attained that comfy place in life. After decades of hard work, nose to the grindstone, it’s isn’t easy to give up your favorite obsessions — efficiency, big goals, status, and (my all-time favorite) the to-do list.
4. Have You Found Your Peeps?
Retired means that you now know who your people are — maybe it’s the second husband and his kids. Or the college sweetheart you rediscovered when you were both widowed. Maybe it’s your siblings or the group of friends that has stuck by you over the years.
For me, it’s the dozens of people who phoned or visited or sent cookies in the weeks after Jon died. Sometimes it takes a death in the family to find out how many people care about you.
5. Has That Pesky Biological Clock Stopped Ticking?
Best of all, your biological clock is not ticking any more. You either had those kids or you didn’t. And if you did, they’ve flown the coop and they can pay their own way now. Pretty much.
6. Do You Know Where You Are?
Retired means you know where you belong on the planet, and that is, right here, right now, in your own skin and not in anyone else’s.
Calculating Your Happily Retired Score: It doesn’t matter. Be happy.
More about getting up in years at “Am I Still Old? Or Am I Elderly Now?” If you feel like you’ve already taken this little quiz, maybe you did. A version of it was posted here back in 2015, when I had just finished writing my first book and was thinking about the next.
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