Let’s Retire The Word Retire

Consider the definition of retire.  Does “withdraw, retreat, hibernate or seclude” fit your thinking?  Is that you?  If not, then it’s time to retire the word retire.  It’s time to discover new ways to live and work.  It’s time to replace the word retire with the word repack.  

It was an ultimate adventure to a realm far away and deep within.  I was leading a walking safari in Tanzania along the edge of the great Serengeti Plain.  Looking like a walking advertisement for L.L. Bean, I was delighted when my new friend, Thaddeus Ole Koyie, a Maasai village chief, expressed a fascination with the contents of my impressive backpack.  Proudly, I commenced to lay out all of my high tech essentials.  After several minutes of just gazing at everything, the chief asked with great intensity, “Does all this make you happy?”

With that simple question, Koyie captured the essence of the retirement quest:  What will make me happy?  Do I really want to retire, or do I want to repack?

As far as many people are concerned, retirement is the time of life when they no longer have to go to work but can stay home or travel or do whatever they wish within the framework of the money and resources available to them.  Retirement is anticipated as a period of continuous vacation when we are rewarded for having had to work all our lives.

At least that is the attitude of many people, until they are actually approaching retirement.  Then they start having second thoughts about it.  They begin to realize that they might miss something essential to life.  Some are concerned about no longer having a sense of connection or of not making a contribution.  Most people, in fact, don’t disengage but often engage in a greater number of activities after they retire.

The first article in a series  from the “ON PURPOSE” newsletter.  A journal about taking charge of your life/work by Richard J. Leider