Imagine a completed portrait of your life; not just your appearance, but your interests, passions, spiritual life, and influence depicted in creative ways.
Now, with that lovely image in your mind, imagine that you’re going to the doctor, and the form you are inevitably given asks you to check a box: working or retired. For those who recently retired or whose identity was largely in their work, checking ‘retired’ might conjure up different pictures, like that they’re old or no longer contributing.
The magnificent portrait is gone.
“Retired” is a box into which I don’t fit, and I never neatly fit into the “working” box either. I am of retirement age, but I haven’t had a full-time paying job since my 30s, have worked part-time for years, done countless hours of volunteer work, and the way I spend my time, my work, isn’t much different than it has been for the last thirty years. I haven’t retired from my work, and I don’t intend to, but I haven’t had a traditional career to which I said goodbye.
When asked if I’m working or retired, I never know which box to check.
What is work?
The word “work” is understood in different ways. Merriam Webster gives ten definitions for the verb and twelve for the noun, the most inclusive being: activity in which one exerts strength or faculties to do or perform something.
Those “somethings” are everything we use our minds and bodies to accomplish. The culture doesn’t think of work that way, but I do.
As a child, I worked to learn to walk, speak, share my toys, play, read, think; as a teenager, I began to figure out who I am, learned the difference between having a friend and being a friend, conquered algebra, science, history and literature, and began to work for a paycheck. As a young adult, I worked to earn income, take care of my finances and become a contributing member of society. As I grew older, my work took on many forms: learning, volunteering, chores around the house, raising three wonderful children, writing, speaking, hosting meals with friends and family, to name a few. Now, I’m working at the library and as a writer, and I am still working to learn, grow closer to God, write and speak more clearly, and to better love family members and friends.
In all my years, I’ve worked in a chosen career for about a dozen years, but I have worked since the day I was born. You too have been working since the day you were born.
What is Retired?
With that definition of work, we never retire from work, but we will at some point retire from our careers, our paid work.
Google “retirement” and you will see that the results are overwhelmingly financial. There aren’t nearly as many sites where an individual can find information on the emotional, relational and spiritual implications of leaving one’s job. (That’s one reason I write this newsletter.) Our culture has over-emphasized the economic value of work and underemphasized the personal development benefits of work, and they are all important.
It seems to me that the word ‘retirement’ has conflated multiple aspects of life and work into one. Work is the means by which we earn income, which is important, of course, but through our work we also grow in knowledge, skill, wisdom, and experience that impacts our lives in ways beyond the financial. Furthermore, we are each far more than our jobs; we are individuals who have relationships, interests, hobbies, responsibilities and volunteer work that add depth and interest to our intellectual, emotional, and spiritual portraits.
When we leave our jobs, we do not erase the images. On the contrary, in retirement years we continue to refine the picture, discovering and adding splashes of who we are and new brushstrokes of what is important to us.
Retirement is an opportunity, privilege, and gift to further develop the portrait of your life, and each life is a uniquely beautiful image.
Reimagine Your Retirement
Imagine yourself painting the full portrait of your life, and your income earning work is a large part of it, but there is much more. Fill in the areas that have been neglected, add color to interests, define new areas of the portrait that may have never occurred to you. Finish the portrait.
When a form asks me if I’m retired or working, I still don’t know which box to check, but it doesn’t really matter. Pick one. Write in an answer. Unless it’s an IRS or official form, use your imagination.
Keep that completed portrait in mind.
Photo by Andres Perez on Unsplash