retirement life
Lately been watching various vlogs on different people’s retirement stories. One person created this very structured system for measuring every last possible dimension of life where he wanted to go. This was months in the making. Each time he found a new thing he added it to the spreadsheet. It’s cost. It’s rating perhaps. This went for months I am gathering. Meanwhile he was paralyzed by analysis. He could not just go. The spreadsheets perhaps did not align right. There was a thing perhaps he had not accounted for. Life was slipping by and he felt powerless. Reminded me of my friend Art’s diet thing. One spreadsheet to rule them all.
Another person lived in a tent in Australia. It was all he had. No home. No family. He got benefits of whatever kind and after securing them moved to Thailand. No waiting. No analysis. No paralysis. He said he knew he had to go. He wanted something more in the quality of life than what he was getting. So he just went. Things happened. He met a Filipina and a relationship ensued. She had to go back for family issues and then not allowed back in Thailand. So they went to Cambodia. He could not live in Phnom Penh and she did not like the choices. They split up. He lives in Kampot and loving it. She teaches in Vietnam.
Two stories
Like how life diverged for two completely different people. One could not let go and just let life be. He both feared and anticipated change. Realizing his time was slipping away and he felt powerless. The other knew he must go. Or he would suffer the pain of having nothing in a tent somewhere in Australia.
So what to do? Choices in life. For me, I had known for years. I knew I must go. There really was no plan ever. No schedule of do this and then that. No spreadsheet. I also had a good job doing a thing I hated.
So time came for me to go. I knew I would just go. Have no idea. I had done plans and schedules for decades. Measured critical programs and teams and schedules which never seemed to let us do the work. Instead rushed to finish a thing. Changing workweeks to 7 days. Sitting in an office on Christmas Eve one year as our network and infrastructure team wrestled with production network changes and the change team manager asking how we were doing. I fucking hated that.
I knew I could not measure and plan any more. I needed this one thing. Spontaneous life. Serendipitous discovery. And release. Not like either of the two but influenced looking back on both.
So two stories. Two paths. Two ways. I came up today with things. Passages.
- We all need to find a way to live that will give us what it is we need. Not unbearable expenses or finding a life beset by a place that holds us back and never holds us. The way that maybe is escape. Perhaps we’ve outlived our generation. Found a thing out there which tickles our sensibilities. Makes us yearn for a thing which seems simpler. Easier. Where life is not cribbage games or spreadsheets or living in a tent.
- Finding that life is not about accountability and responsibility only. That there must be room to breathe. Find space. Perhaps there is no underlying reality in any of it. That’s ok too.
- And then we must go. I say “must”. Because we must. Instead of living under the poverty of spreadsheets or finding life dwindling away in a tent. We must have our final acts. They must be ours to own. Going for many is not optional. But it’s a fear. My friend RWR used to note change is not optional. We either live it or live with it.
So why do people continue with lives they would rather change. Because they are afraid I feel. Afraid of staying the same and of changing. Of taking a step to a place that cannot be measured in spreadsheets. When we were children we were risk takers. We did stupid things sometimes that had brilliant results. We took chances and reaped rewards. Or punishments. Or both. We get old and all those things have dropped out of our lives. Instead we keep the senseless preoccupation and belief one day we will change. Like we will wake up and say,
Ok. Done with that. Now it’s time.
It’s easy to say it. Not so easy to be it. We’ve lost the risk taking. The belief in ourselves. That we can do things where the outcome is unknown. Not measured. Outside the flaps of the tent that hold us back.
So what to do
Easy. Take a chance. A step. My mom used to say hell in life for all women and men is when one wonders what might have been. The infinite variety of life. What it can deliver. When a persons reach far exceeds their grasp.
It’s not about some perfect place that emulates what you had at home. I kinda laugh at some Thailand expats that just replicate it all and believe life then is simple. It’s not. You just recreated all the things you left behind. Instead maybe consider what Thoreau said about simplicity. About the doing. Find perhaps your very own Walden pond. Your place where the everything just is. You don’t need to replicate all the things you wanted away from just because they’re cheaper elsewhere. You’re just replacing your hell with another. Perhaps cheaper. I believe nothing has changed and you just find a new lifestyle that is comfortable and does not let you find really what little a person needs.
I’ve never missed cars, land, homes. Stuff. Those things we believe are anchors of our lives. Even relationships that go and go south. They become anchors. And then they become chains. We believe that life is about things. Our ability to have more things. What were once anchors become chains.
To me that is not creating a life that I wanted. Not more of the same crap I was miserable with before. I wanted change. Not recreating crap. Sometimes with people too.
So retirement is more than letting go in the end. It’s also taking up. Holding. Finding. Some of us don’t need steps well defined after a life of that. Others want it all laid out in columns and rows. But when it comes time it’s time. I wrote on one YouTube vlog comments,
Don’t wait for perfection. It will just hold you back and not move you forward.
Take a chance on yourself. You know you are capable of much. After all you have already done much. It’s not all happiness and gains. It’s sorrow and losses too. My mom wrote once,
Life is a matter of living. Making each moment count. Life is a matter of giving. Giving the right amount.
Why not do both. Take a chance. Do a thing where the outcome is not assured.
Thanks for reading this. I hope both people above see that life is often not about finding or losing. It’s always the voyage that counts. The going.
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