Chapter 49 : “Don't give up your day job.”

Reprinted exactly as printed in "The Mercury" newspaper

According to a recent article in this paper, “Talking Point: Retirement blows Sunday clouds away”, work is evil or bad. It has to be endured until you retire and then suddenly you have choices about you do. When retired you can choose to what do. And you only do what you enjoy. Retirement contrasts with your working life when you always have to do what you don’t want to do.

It is not the way I have lived my life. My life as a working and retired person. I worked for forty years and about a year ago I suddenly and abruptly entered retirement land.

I think of work as a stage I was going through. My life began with a stage of pre-school life followed by a stage when I was a student. Both of these stages came and went. I never looked back on either stage as being perfect and as something I long to return to forever. When at Uni I never dreamed wistfully of my years at primary school and wished I could return. I thought one stage had ended and had been replaced by another. I took the same attitudes, friends and beliefs from one stage to the next. I was the same person doing different things. Different challenges, goals and activities.

My working life. What can one say? I never hated, dreaded or despised it. I never sat around dreaming of retirement. I just tried to do my best. I always tried to learn. To know my subject better. I always tied to relate better to the people I encountered. To get to know the people better.  I tried to get pleasure from it. Or to find out why I wasn’t getting pleasure from it.

I confess I had bad days and good days. I had times when I succeeded. Times when I achieved my goals. Times when I failed. Times I was proud. Times I was embarrassed. Times I thought about changing jobs. Times I loved my job. I ran the full gamut of experiences. In fact I could write a book about my life working. You couldn’t separate my work from me. It was my life. My life would not have existed without work. I can’t imagine my life without working.

About a year ago I suddenly retired. It was unplanned and unprepared for. It was a different stage I had entered. It was not days of continuous bliss. It was not a time of sadness either.  It was a different stage I had entered.  A lot of the things I did were the same. I was the same person. I believed and behaved the same. I reacted with people I met the same. I continued my interest in gardening, sport, writing and my family. In fact playing tennis some evenings, people have been surprised I am retired. They have given me   a slightly strange disbelieving look. Which sort of proves I am the same person.

Since retirement I have experienced various emotions. They have been the full range of emotions and strangely they have been exactly the same emotions I experienced when working. Though now, if I disappointed, it is more likely to be with the choices on the menu in the cafe.

I have not celebrated my retirement. I have never spent time wishing I was back where I used to be. I have just accepted everything I have been dealt and got on with it. 

When you are retired one thing that happens is you don’t get days off. You don’t look forward to the holidays or the weekends. All days are of the same importance. There are no special days to look forward to. And you are not allowed bad days[i]. You are not allowed a day when everything goes wrong. A day when you can rale about life, the traffic, the crowds, the receptionist, the checkout chicks and telephone marketers.  If you are having a bad day there is no one to criticise. Nobody to blame. You can’t go home and throw darts at a picture of your boss. You can’t get on Facebook and rent your spleen about management and their stupid decisions.

Many people don’t retire. Artists, musicians, writers, poets and people who have an occupation which is more than just a job, never retire. Rupert Murdoch is working many years past the age at which he could financially retire.  This is great. I love a businessman who enjoys his job so much he continues. This is the way I would prefer everybody to be aiming. Aim for an occupation where you don’t want to retire. Aim for a career that doesn’t bind you or restrict you. A career where retirement is not thought about. This is what you should aim for.

And back to the important issue. Can you do what you want when you retire? Of course not. I am a social animal.   Everything I do involves other people. Everytime I do something involving other people I must consult with them. I must consider their feelings, attitudes or them. Now that I am retired I have not suddenly become an island that exists without needing or helping other people. In fact the opposite could be true.

 I know retired people who become more engaged more connected. One way is via doing voluntary work.

A large number of retired people do volunteer work. Do voluntary work and you can regain a few of the things you lose when you retire. You belong to an organization that has a goal. You have a reason for living. You are responsible for something.  You are included in notices, messages, emails, the tea room and Christmas parties.  It will be noticed if you don’t turn up.  You have somebody to talk to about good days and bad days. 

The idea that adult life consists of two completely separate and distinct halves is a dangerous myth. The attitude that work is to be endured until you retire is very dangerous. The attitude that retirement is a reward and consists of unbridled bliss is very dangerous. For both working people and retired people.

For working people the attitude is that work is to be endured and consists of putting up with your boss, boredom and enslavement. A period of servitude will eventually be followed by a reward.  This myth stops people from living their lives in the moment.  It is as distorting of the truth as the myth that a man in a sleigh flies the earth delivering presents. 

For the retired person the myth is that you have reached it. You are now in paradise. You are going to enjoy everyday and everything.  It is a dangerous belief. Because reality will intervene. One day you will realise that your life does not match the perfect image that you were told about. And what happens when there is a difference between reality and the myth in your head? That is the question.

Alan Carlton is a former Hobart dentist. He was retired medically in October 2015.  He know spends some of his time running, playing tennis, gardening, with his family and writing for his blogs.   

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[i] Apart from bad hair days.

Chapter 48 : The end of perfection

In October 2015 after playing tennis I went home and went to bed.  Two weeks later I slowly woke up. Sometime when slipping between sleep and comatose I had been reclassified. I was now a patient.
As I began to wake and emerge from the unconscious land I inhabited I tried to connect to a world I vaguely remembered. As I did this I realised I was wearing a label. A label which said “patient”.  I had been classified and put in the box that said “patient”.   My family were called “carers”.  We had all entered a world we had only ever seen on TV. 

The carers had a role to play. They had to care for the patient. They had to do things for him. To look after the patient. They had to protect the patient. They were never to complain. They were always to help. They were never to ask for help.  They were always to expect stability or constant change. They were never to be faced with unexplained or random changes.

And the label above me said “patient”. That was my role. A patient is always compliant. Always sits or lies on a bed. A patient always waits patiently. He depends on everybody. He waits for everything. When he has an appointment he says thank you. He is always gracious. Always accepting. And everybody asks him about himself. And he always answers politely.

Well a year later.  How did we go?  Did I play my role well? And the others, how did they go? What did the critics say? How many stars did they give?  Did the show should finish with everybody having learnt their lesson and having a laugh together followed by the credits.

In the hospital I was surrounded by nurses and other paid carers. Lying in bed I always tended to classify them as being good or bad. To be efficient at following the rules, to know something about the medications, to remember your name; to remember how you drank tea.  I always classified them as either good or bad. Now I don’t I see the medical staff as human. They were better at some things than others. For a variety of reasons. Maybe they had seen a similar case the week before. Maybe they had gone to a lecture which helped. Maybe their child was watching TV the day before; saw an ad for a breakfast cereal; refused to eat his normal breakfast; caused her to be late for work; which upset her superior who admonished her in front of a patient.

For all the staff everyday was different. Their work varied. Their attitude and behavior varied. Everything about them varied. They did not deserve to be put in a box marked good or bad.  I could say most of them did their best or tried their best but that is over simplistic. Some days some of them, for an unexplained reason, didn’t concentrate on what was in front of them. Everybody was different and each individual person constantly changed.

Well how did I go as a patient?

The reality is I didn’t love or hate being a patient. I never thought that I had chosen it or I could chose something else. I never thought about it. There were times when I was the perfect patient. I sat and talked about signs of improvement and getting better. There were times I was compliant and grateful. Is the reverse also true? Well I suppose it has to be. There are times when I was a difficult patient. when I was going through “a stage”. Most of the time I just tried to live each day as best I could.

What I found is that both the patient and the carers were random and unpredictable in an unpredictable fashion. Sometimes they were predictable. Sometimes for a multitude of unexplained reasons they did things which were unexplained. Is it time to end perfection and embrace chaos?  No because chaos has such a bad reputation.  The word cannot be said without conjuring bad thoughts. Well what then  is the alternative.

Living in the present, being aware of your surroundings and reacting or acting sensitively. Increasing awareness helps. Not the first person to say this. You can phrase it any way you like or use any words you want or believe in any underlying philosophy or religion you want but I would think that when perfection ends it should be replaced by living in the present and increasing awareness.

Well how many stars? I would mark this show harshly because of the finish. Nobody explained what had happened and why. No clues to the future.  It was as if they were leaving the ending open for a second show. Coming soon.