Put on “the cube” to set the mood:
Let us imagine the best case:
You have reached the age when you no longer have to work. It does not have to be at sixty-five or seventy, it can happen much earlier. The whole point of retirement, and of rest in general, is being able to do whatever you want whenever you want. Even if that “doing” means doing nothing, and equally if it means sitting in the garage for days building a statue of a Transformer that nobody will ever appreciate and that your descendants will sell or cut up for scrap. On that note I would like to tell you a parable:
About the old man and the bees
There once was a man who spent his whole life doing nothing but beekeeping. He lived a long life, ninety-nine years. And when his time came, people came to say goodbye to him on his deathbed. Because the whole village knew him. They asked him: grandad Ivan, you spent your whole life on nothing but bees. Tell us, what matters most in life?
The old man said: “Lads. Everything is rubbish except bees!”
After lying there a while, thinking, the old man, already dying, with his last breath said:“And come to think of it, bees are rubbish too,” and died.
The end
And there you are, getting up in the morning, not because you want to but because you are simply used to it. You wash, dress unhurriedly and have breakfast. The day ahead is entirely yours. Over your life you have earned enough to eat well and sleep soundly, you have put your children through school and now see them very rarely. They have their own families and their own problems. Your wife or husband will not tell you anything new. Perhaps it is time to do everything you have wanted all your life.
– Maybe live by the sea?
– Build a house yourself?
– Restore a car or a motorbike?
– Learn to play the piano?
One acquaintance of mine says that when he reaches retirement he will sit on his porch and smoke weed all day. Grow it too. A farmer of sorts.
And I am already writing a list of things I would like to do “later”. Only here is the question: is that right? Must you really spend your whole life enduring and doing what you do not want at all, only what you have to? So that later, maybe, if your strength and health allow, if your children are successful and independent, if you earn enough money, if the world does not end, if the work finally stops and there is time for something else, and perhaps you will spend the rest of your days at work anyway? Is any of that right? And why are there so many “ifs”? Should your happiness really depend on them?
Start your list! Remember or write down what you would genuinely like to take up and to do. Life passes, and nobody knows what comes after. Maybe there is a second chance? Maybe you will watch from the outside? And what if beyond there is only emptiness and nothing ahead… And you kept waiting and waiting for those “ifs” to end. And let it be, for one short moment before death, or perhaps already after it, that you feel sad, sad because you never did see the end of those strange, endless, merciless “ifs”.
I wish all of you the strength and the time to stop and clear your head. To allow yourself to destroy those “ifs”.
And let me be your example. Not that I am bragging, but I had long wanted to write this article, to sit and philosophise, casting all the “ifs” aside. I did it. Literally ten minutes ago. In that time a pleasant tune played three times. I relaxed. I enjoyed it, I looked inside myself. My work remains on paper, pleasant work. I will be proud of it, and even if everyone says that everything is rubbish except bees, it will matter to me. I hope that for you too, something will always matter.
And now something funny about retirement:
PS: this piece was inspired by the following story:
Several drinking buddies, aged between forty-six and seventy-six, were found guilty of stealing jewellery worth twenty million pounds.
When the police checked the vault they found nothing but dust, rubbish and scattered tools, that is how cleanly the lads worked. Here, by the way, is their photo:
The age of the criminals, the audacity of the theft and the way they were caught amused and shocked the English in equal measure.
Here are the key details of the story:
– Seventy-six-year-old Brian Reader used his pensioner’s travel pass to get to the scene of the theft.
– The theft was planned for three years, and the planning took place in a pub in north London.
– The gang disguised themselves as workmen, then went down the lift shaft and dug for two days.
– The old men removed the security cameras inside the building but forgot the outside ones. Thanks to that the police were able to track down seventy-six-year-old John Collins, who annoyed the others because he kept falling asleep on lookout duty.
– While under surveillance the police saw them bragging about their success in the pub.
– The police found a copy of “Forensics for Dummies” in the house of one of the old men.
– The men hid the loot in various places, such as a cemetery or a SAUCEPAN. However only a third of it has been found.
The investigator said they were the last analogue criminals in a digital world.