With my fingers currently flitting over the keyboard with space-travel like tempo – and with one’s psyche now utterly awash with recollections of childhood days – I sense that my otherwise deep-rooted and defiant sangfroid, is being speedily conquered by an all-consuming agitation, that being borne out of one’s comparisons to elders past – and elders present– why oh why do we, the human components of a rather ‘exclusive club’, so desperately and wretchedly struggle to decamp from a base of which we no longer have a place – and woefully err in pragmatically clinching the retiral (sic) phase of life’s glorious journey – unlike our ancestors?
For no less than two full years following my own enforced detachment from lifelong travail – I too toiled miserably from the horrors of assuming one’s new social designation within the world order, (OAP) – and soon perched myself atop a scrapheap of melancholy – wholly bereft of visionary capability or strident purpose – thus lacking the key pre-requisites to go forth and conquer as the metaphorical ‘elder statesman’?
During the dark days that made-up these early retirement years – and there were a few – I should have turned the mythical corner and exited ‘Bemusement Boulevard’ – then kept walking along ‘Freedom Road’ to see if my former educationalist was striding ahead of me – the mere presence of Mr. Carmichael would have incontrovertibly had a shriveling effect on my then unwillingness to embrace the future – and that of the uncertainty that one’s retirement years may – or quiet possibly would – all-too vividly promulgate – this as the parabolic ‘gloves’ were reluctantly being hung up for the final time.
Yet, I didn’t, it was the then ‘present’ that consumed me during that near debilitating juncture – and not the past – oh, the barrenness and ultimate perils of a once busy existence – but overcome I eventually did, thanks largely to the persistent encouragement of a long suffering spouse, a brace of adult professional offspring – and an all-inspiring, unbelievably agile, blue-rinsed septuagenarian by the name of Mrs Higgins – more on this divine example of gifted human femininity to follow in my summary below.
Since enthusiastically, (if not belatedly) entombing one’s earlier-day gremlins deep within a sepulcher of perpetuity – I have frequently, but inwardly, theorized and relentlessly hypothesized – to [stoically] identify with the specific rationale – or prime reasons that lay behind international retirement angst – entwining those intrinsic foibles which remain incontestably and vividly apparent throughout the vast number of fretful communiques that I scan and inwardly ingest on a regular basis. (Via this wonderful website)
One does not have to be a supreme forensic expert, nor that of a scrupulous coroner, to successfully dissect the root cause of cerebral perturbation – that which affects considerable clusters of contemporary retirees globally – retirement not merely heralds the end of working life, it can and indeed does, bring with it a wrongful diagnosis – stemming from a perverted and unqualified self determination’ – suggesting that, “The work days are over – and now I am old” – Age then sickeningly positions itself as the paramount and discomposing feature in our day-to-day transience – not material possessions, not financial issues – and certainly not solitude, the latter of which is a predominant, preferred state-of-grace for Lord knows how many – in due course they are sited alone within the confines of their retirement domiciles and inanely contemplate what to specifically do next with their new-found liberty – if anything at all! – I was that guy!
As most readers of my transcript thus far, will have rightfully come to the conscientious conclusion, that the somewhat bullish author of this opinionated narrative, is not one who may be considered as a semantic dummy or linguistically challenged buffoon – of which I’m certainly not, yet, I nevertheless stick to my wholehearted, and, dare I say, sagacious claim, that the menacing malady which ruthlessly undermines the ‘20-20’ focus and once industrious pluck of downcast retirees, has its origins in the self-registration of misconceived uselessness by virtue of age – essentially when working life uninvitingly draws to a close – and as we erroneously identify with our ‘on-the-shelf’ deliverance as little more than a detestable relocation from professional purpose – to that of deprecatory despair – we then pitifully indulge in male cow excrement logic – at best!
From my perspective, retirement brings with it an anesthetizing effect – thus numbing one’s self- evaluation of true worth – one moment we are thriving and productive cynosure’s in a cut and thrust sphere of initiative and accomplishment – the next, we are excess baggage, where eviction from a once functional, systematic and fruitful setting is laid bare – akin to that of our otherwise sound levels of profundity and percipience – each factor excruciatingly exhibiting a ‘Mother Hubbard’ actuality – heralding nothing on the job front – and nothing in the physiological wallet to fill our deprived larder – yet this synopsis is not as a result of age – it is connected purely to compos mentis impairment, a near inescapable malaise that mercilessly blights the emotional well-being of stratospheric numbers of retirees everywhere.
We are each victims of our 20th Century birthdays, an epoch that, relatively speaking, espoused far greater opportunity and freedom than that of the aforementioned, less privileged Homo sapiens who endured on ‘bread and dripping’ values, many moons ago.
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A good blog summarizing some of the bleakness that many have to deal with once retired. I found that of my friends who transitioned to retirement, the ones who had outside interests or hobbies and a social circle had a much easier time than those whose work was their life.