Calling all thinkers
I am not the only person I know who is thinking about life after sixty. The idea for this Blog came from a brief correspondence with Lyman Orton.
Head honcho at the Vermont Country Store, www.vermontcountrystore.com, Mr. Orton has been contemplating the characteristics of "the good life" and he put an editorial about problems in one active senior community in his store's catalog. I noticed the editorial, read it, and sent him my own two cents on the subject. (Hopefully Mr. Orton and any other readers will have two cents to add as they read this blog.)
Mr. Orton seemed focused on the big picture--attempting to define the good life as applies to everyone rather than just for himself. I, on the other hand, have been thinking in strictly personal terms. But I have been thinking about aging in America for as long as I can remember.
I was raised in a family that believed retirement was deadly. My grandfather had a massive coronary after retiring at forty-eight and moving to Arizona. No one in the family blamed Arizona for the heart attack. It was lack of meaningful employment that everyone assumed to be the cause of Grandpa Jack's health problems.
Grandpa Jack had dropped out of school in fifth grade to sell herring from a pushcart. From that modest start he built a big pickle company that supported his wife and daughters, his parents, and his four brothers and their families. As long as he was the boss of everyone he was perfectly healthy and happy.
Grandpa Jack survived that major heart attack and came home from Arizona to take back his position in the family business. And I grew up expecting to work until I dropped just to postpone dropping.
When I found myself unemployed for reasons beyond my control at fifty-eight and in a down economy, I was too busy with elder care and my own health problems to look for work effectively. It took me a long time to accept the idea that life could be so totally out of my control and even longer to accept that I was retired and just didn't know it.
If the economy were better today, I might go back to work and stop thinking about the way that retirement impacts my social, spiritual, financial, and physical well being. In this economy, that sounds unrealistic.
I can't complain too much about the economy. By the time the nation's economy had collapsed, I'd already eaten a lot of my retirement savings. And because I had never favored the get-rich-quick schemes that everyone else pursued, I managed to hold on to the remains of my lifetime savings while all about me were losing theirs.
Still, the time has come to evaluate life, to decide what I would like to change and what I'd prefer to see not change, what I am capable of changing and what I must accept. It will be up to me to maximize the pleasure available and minimize the pain. Like it or not, now is the time...
Head honcho at the Vermont Country Store, www.vermontcountrystore.com, Mr. Orton has been contemplating the characteristics of "the good life" and he put an editorial about problems in one active senior community in his store's catalog. I noticed the editorial, read it, and sent him my own two cents on the subject. (Hopefully Mr. Orton and any other readers will have two cents to add as they read this blog.)
Mr. Orton seemed focused on the big picture--attempting to define the good life as applies to everyone rather than just for himself. I, on the other hand, have been thinking in strictly personal terms. But I have been thinking about aging in America for as long as I can remember.
I was raised in a family that believed retirement was deadly. My grandfather had a massive coronary after retiring at forty-eight and moving to Arizona. No one in the family blamed Arizona for the heart attack. It was lack of meaningful employment that everyone assumed to be the cause of Grandpa Jack's health problems.
Grandpa Jack had dropped out of school in fifth grade to sell herring from a pushcart. From that modest start he built a big pickle company that supported his wife and daughters, his parents, and his four brothers and their families. As long as he was the boss of everyone he was perfectly healthy and happy.
Grandpa Jack survived that major heart attack and came home from Arizona to take back his position in the family business. And I grew up expecting to work until I dropped just to postpone dropping.
When I found myself unemployed for reasons beyond my control at fifty-eight and in a down economy, I was too busy with elder care and my own health problems to look for work effectively. It took me a long time to accept the idea that life could be so totally out of my control and even longer to accept that I was retired and just didn't know it.
If the economy were better today, I might go back to work and stop thinking about the way that retirement impacts my social, spiritual, financial, and physical well being. In this economy, that sounds unrealistic.
I can't complain too much about the economy. By the time the nation's economy had collapsed, I'd already eaten a lot of my retirement savings. And because I had never favored the get-rich-quick schemes that everyone else pursued, I managed to hold on to the remains of my lifetime savings while all about me were losing theirs.
Still, the time has come to evaluate life, to decide what I would like to change and what I'd prefer to see not change, what I am capable of changing and what I must accept. It will be up to me to maximize the pleasure available and minimize the pain. Like it or not, now is the time...
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