Day 534 - Retirement should be retired - https://golifelog.com/posts/retirement-should-be-retired-1655521883904
I read this recent CNBC article, bemused:
“The biggest retirement challenge that no one talks about, in my experience, is finding purpose.”
Really? Is retirement still a thing?
I’ve always felt retirement as a concept doesn’t make sense. If you hate what you do, then why keep doing it till 65? If you love what you do, why should you stop doing it at 65 just because of some arbitrarily set time called “retirement” age? I think at the base there’s this view that work is unsavoury, and had to be done with eventually.
Here’s my hot take:
“Retirement” is overrated. Work is misunderstood.
At least in the traditional definition of it where one retires by kick backing and doing nothing.
My own take:
Work should continue. But the reason you do it can change. If you have retirement savings and assets, then work becomes an opportunity for personal exploration, adventure and fun of something you never had chance to do when you needed to work to live.
“Fuck an early retirement. I want to die doing what I love.” – @SaasSavant
From work to live… to live to work.
(Of course, obvious caveats: This is a higher income bracket 1st world problem. Continuing to work well into your 70s-80s because you need to work to live is a different set of issues altogether…)
Work can be a way of life. Work can be a way of being. I can’t talk about it any better than my favourite author poet Kahlil Gibran, so here’s it in verbatim:
"On Work
in The Prophet
You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth.
For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons,
and to step out of life’s procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite.
Work is love made visible.
And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.
For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man’s hunger.
And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine...."
Work is love made visible indeed. I couldn’t have said it any better.
If work is love made visible, why stop work to retire then? Does your love for yourself, others, life and the world stop at 65?
Nope.
Why stop then? Why stop at all?
“The biggest retirement challenge that no one talks about, in my experience, is finding purpose.”
Really? Is retirement still a thing?
I’ve always felt retirement as a concept doesn’t make sense. If you hate what you do, then why keep doing it till 65? If you love what you do, why should you stop doing it at 65 just because of some arbitrarily set time called “retirement” age? I think at the base there’s this view that work is unsavoury, and had to be done with eventually.
Here’s my hot take:
“Retirement” is overrated. Work is misunderstood.
At least in the traditional definition of it where one retires by kick backing and doing nothing.
My own take:
Work should continue. But the reason you do it can change. If you have retirement savings and assets, then work becomes an opportunity for personal exploration, adventure and fun of something you never had chance to do when you needed to work to live.
“Fuck an early retirement. I want to die doing what I love.” – @SaasSavant
From work to live… to live to work.
(Of course, obvious caveats: This is a higher income bracket 1st world problem. Continuing to work well into your 70s-80s because you need to work to live is a different set of issues altogether…)
Work can be a way of life. Work can be a way of being. I can’t talk about it any better than my favourite author poet Kahlil Gibran, so here’s it in verbatim:
"On Work
in The Prophet
You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth.
For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons,
and to step out of life’s procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite.
Work is love made visible.
And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.
For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man’s hunger.
And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine...."
Work is love made visible indeed. I couldn’t have said it any better.
If work is love made visible, why stop work to retire then? Does your love for yourself, others, life and the world stop at 65?
Nope.
Why stop then? Why stop at all?