The following was posted on Nov 4, here and written by Andrea Coombes
Here, then, are six surprising perspectives on retirement, culled from the voices of people who are living and breathing it right now. These perspectives are based on interviews in “The New Senior Woman,” as well as “The Time of Your Life: Everyone Has a Story,” a book co-authored by Gayle Leona Jabour and Daniel Tigner, for which they interviewed Canadian men and women aged 50 to 100. For more on each book, visit their respective websites, thenewseniorwoman.com and revealinglightproductions.com.
1. Plan ahead for disappointment
Retirement is often portrayed as the ultimate goal of a life spent working, but all that free time isn't always what it’s cracked up to be. For some retirees, it’s a challenge.
“Freedom is not as exhilarating as I had imagined,” said a woman who had retired from a career in advertising and public relations, as quoted in “The New Senior Woman.” She added that she was embarrassed to admit that retirement isn’t as wonderful as expected.
One theme among happier retirees: They embraced new ventures or returned to a hobby that had made them happy. For example, another retiree quoted in “The New Senior Woman,” Joan, said the first year of her retirement “was a drag.”
She and her husband had moved to Manhattan from their Long Island home. Joan had few friends there, and her first foray into volunteering—at the Metropolitan Museum of Art—didn’t pan out, as they had a long list of eager volunteers.
But, she devised a plan. She signed up for classes and lectures, and joined a gym. “Through these activities, I met women who were often new retirees or women who, like me, had recently moved to the city,” Joan said. “We soon formed a nucleus of friends.”
She added that retirement is like new motherhood. “Suddenly one is isolated and hoping to find company and, like a young mother, must push herself to find people and activities that work in her new role.”
2. Don’t be busy just for busy’s sake
When you retire, take some time before deciding how, precisely, to spend your time.
“It takes a little while after you retire just to sort things out,” said 72-year-old Sylvia Sutherland, former mayor of Peterborough in Ontario, Canada, as quoted in “The Time of Your Life.”
“As soon as I retired as mayor, I got all these calls asking if I would join this committee or that committee,” Sutherland said. “Your temptation is to say yes, but I advise somebody who has just retired to step back and consider what they really want to do with their days and not to jump into everything all at once.”
Sutherland, who now works as a member of the Ontario Municipal Board, adjudicating land-use disputes, among other responsibilities, said she enjoys the fact that the job keeps her brain active and keeps her busy. She also is happy to be earning money.
“The money is nice,” Sutherland said. “I enjoy that, but I think more than that, the job really does give the brain something to do.”
The happiest retirees made an effort to find work or activities that fulfilled them, Fleisher and Reese write in “The New Senior Woman.”
“They focus on what they can do and learn, not what they’ve lost. And they are willing to make the effort to seek out rewarding activities that will fulfill and reward their days: make the phone calls, find the agencies, commit their time.”
Here, then, are six surprising perspectives on retirement, culled from the voices of people who are living and breathing it right now. These perspectives are based on interviews in “The New Senior Woman,” as well as “The Time of Your Life: Everyone Has a Story,” a book co-authored by Gayle Leona Jabour and Daniel Tigner, for which they interviewed Canadian men and women aged 50 to 100. For more on each book, visit their respective websites, thenewseniorwoman.com and revealinglightproductions.com.
1. Plan ahead for disappointment
Retirement is often portrayed as the ultimate goal of a life spent working, but all that free time isn't always what it’s cracked up to be. For some retirees, it’s a challenge.
“Freedom is not as exhilarating as I had imagined,” said a woman who had retired from a career in advertising and public relations, as quoted in “The New Senior Woman.” She added that she was embarrassed to admit that retirement isn’t as wonderful as expected.
One theme among happier retirees: They embraced new ventures or returned to a hobby that had made them happy. For example, another retiree quoted in “The New Senior Woman,” Joan, said the first year of her retirement “was a drag.”
She and her husband had moved to Manhattan from their Long Island home. Joan had few friends there, and her first foray into volunteering—at the Metropolitan Museum of Art—didn’t pan out, as they had a long list of eager volunteers.
But, she devised a plan. She signed up for classes and lectures, and joined a gym. “Through these activities, I met women who were often new retirees or women who, like me, had recently moved to the city,” Joan said. “We soon formed a nucleus of friends.”
She added that retirement is like new motherhood. “Suddenly one is isolated and hoping to find company and, like a young mother, must push herself to find people and activities that work in her new role.”
2. Don’t be busy just for busy’s sake
When you retire, take some time before deciding how, precisely, to spend your time.
“It takes a little while after you retire just to sort things out,” said 72-year-old Sylvia Sutherland, former mayor of Peterborough in Ontario, Canada, as quoted in “The Time of Your Life.”
“As soon as I retired as mayor, I got all these calls asking if I would join this committee or that committee,” Sutherland said. “Your temptation is to say yes, but I advise somebody who has just retired to step back and consider what they really want to do with their days and not to jump into everything all at once.”
Sutherland, who now works as a member of the Ontario Municipal Board, adjudicating land-use disputes, among other responsibilities, said she enjoys the fact that the job keeps her brain active and keeps her busy. She also is happy to be earning money.
“The money is nice,” Sutherland said. “I enjoy that, but I think more than that, the job really does give the brain something to do.”
The happiest retirees made an effort to find work or activities that fulfilled them, Fleisher and Reese write in “The New Senior Woman.”
“They focus on what they can do and learn, not what they’ve lost. And they are willing to make the effort to seek out rewarding activities that will fulfill and reward their days: make the phone calls, find the agencies, commit their time.”
3. Be creative about volunteer work
Volunteering can take many different forms—it could be a project you create and implement—so don’t feel as though your options are limited.
For one retiree in Florida, volunteering turned into a project to teach troubled teenagers how to knit items that they then donate to those in need. The teenagers “love the idea that they are doing something for others who are in need of support,” she said in “The New Senior Woman.”
Another woman, a retired medical librarian, happened to meet a doctor who was developing a medical library in Cambodia. She decided to help, first by collecting and shipping medical books, and eventually by making many trips to the library to help develop it.
“This project has given me a focus in my retirement,” she said in the “The New Senior Woman.” “You can’t help the whole world. But if you pick one little thing, or one little place, you can make a difference.”
4. Accidents happen
Retirement dreams, like any others, can get waylaid by accidents in an instant. The lesson from the retirees interviewed in these books? Don’t let depression rule your life.
After retiring from his job as a government worker in Canada’s Customs and Excise office, Don Gibbons fell down a flight of stairs, leaving his left arm paralyzed for about three years—a devastating injury for a retiree eager to resume his music career.
“How did I react to that? The absolute worst way possible—by sitting in a chair,” said Gibbons, in “The Time of Your Life.”
“It took me about two years to finally realize that I was throwing away what I had for 31 years worked for. I spent 31 years working for the federal government, and the whole reason I did that was so that I could retire young and return to my love, which is playing music.”
He got out of the chair and eventually regained movement in his left arm. “Today, I’m playing music again, I’m teaching music and I have a part-time job at a place called Parkdale Mini Storage,” he said.
“I originally took the job when my arm was paralyzed because I needed something to do. That was my first venture out into the world. I don’t really need the job, but I feel a sense of loyalty because that was my first reconnection with the world,” Gibbons said.
His message to retirees? “Get out there and get busy,” he said. “The key is to look back on your life and find what did make you happy, because if it made you happy before, it probably will make you happy again.”
In another case, Marylen, quoted in “A New Senior Woman,” said she spent more than a year in the hospital after being hit by a car. She fought hard to recover from her injuries and the resulting depression, but she’s up and about again.
“Acceptance and adjustment to situations beyond my control are my greatest ongoing challenges,” she said. “It pays off to spend all my energy on the things I can affect and not to waste my time and energy on the things I cannot.”
5. Balance your children’s wishes with your own
For some families, tension can set in as parents age. A retiree named Sally, quoted in “A New Senior Woman,” described how her children are insisting that she and her husband move closer to them, in case they need help in a health crisis.
Sally’s not having it. “Since when did we become so incompetent?” she said. “We resent being infantilized.” She and her husband prefer to stay near their friends.
Adele, in her late 70s, is facing a similar conundrum. She lives near her son and his family in New Jersey, but is considering selling her home to move to a retirement community in Florida, where the winters are warmer.
She works as a travel agent and she says she could continue her work in Florida—“all I need is a telephone and a laptop”—but her son and his wife warn her that they won’t be able to help her if she gets sick. Adele is leaning toward moving anyway, because she can join a retirement community to which many of her friends have moved, and her family can visit her.
If you move, just make sure it’s for the right reasons, Fleisher and Reese write. “We know many people who have picked up roots because of their own and their children’s fears about aging and poor health. And the result is not always happy.”
6. Clear clutter now
Worried about clutter? You’re not alone.
“As we traveled around the country interviewing women…this issue never failed to come up,” Fleisher and Reese write.
“Whether it was a move to smaller quarters or another city or just feeling smothered by having too much stuff around, downsizing is very much on the minds of sixty-plus women,” they said.
If you've got the accumulated stuff of your adult children, consider telling them you’re shipping it to them. That’s how one retiree, quoted in “The New Senior Woman,” handled it: “I told them I was shipping all their things to them this week…You’d be amazed at how little they wanted when they heard that as of next week their stuff had to fit into their closets.”
It won’t be easy, but you’ll feel better for it, the retiree, Barbara F., said. Later, after her husband’s illness worsened, “We were so pleased that we had been clever enough to have done our downsizing while we were still able to share both its work and its pleasure.”
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