Retirement is Not a Dirty Word - It's a Golden Opportunity!
Today I woke up to the good news that one of my articles was on Boomer Café, here it is:
Retirement, for baby boomers, is not a dirty word July 29, 2014
Claude Nougat, author of the new book Forever Young, has written many pieces from her home in Italy for BoomerCafé, and what they’ve shown is a woman with an active, lively life. But what does it all mean? Is this the definition of retirement? That’s what Claude writes about now for baby boomers at BoomerCafé: Retirement, she insists, is not a dirty word.
When I was a young woman working for the United Nations, I sometimes came across older colleagues at the cafeteria whose heated discussions seemed to indicate that their only concern in life was retirement.
I was appalled.
I heard them counting the years and even the days to retirement, the pros and cons of the best pension packages on offer, and I couldn’t believe it. They sounded like Martians. To me, work came first, I was proud to be able to serve in the fight against poverty and hunger in the Third World.[....Life was not about retirement. A dirty word, in my mind, it evoked a vision of decrepit old people, sitting around all day long, doing nothing.
Oh, but now that I am myself retired, how that vision has changed!
I now realize that retirement is not a dirty word,though it is a difficult thing to handle.
First, in spite of what anyone tells you, retirement is not an eternal holiday. It is not about traveling the world and discovering new people. It can be that too (and it is fun, no doubt about it) but that is not the main point of it.
The cafeteria at my work place (FAO in Rome). Retirement is contemplating new opportunities...
Retirement is a golden opportunity for a second career, a second life.
Yes, in retirement, life starts again, the way it did in our twenties when we started on our first job. And that is the catch.It is exactly as hard and challenging to enter the post-work phase of our life as it was to enter into our working life as a young adult.
We face the same harrowing questions. What should I do? What am I good for? What is my life all about? You thought you had shelved those questions forty or fifty years ago? Well, you discover that you are wrong.
...
The rest on Boomer Café, click here.
Retirement, for baby boomers, is not a dirty word July 29, 2014
Claude Nougat, author of the new book Forever Young, has written many pieces from her home in Italy for BoomerCafé, and what they’ve shown is a woman with an active, lively life. But what does it all mean? Is this the definition of retirement? That’s what Claude writes about now for baby boomers at BoomerCafé: Retirement, she insists, is not a dirty word.
When I was a young woman working for the United Nations, I sometimes came across older colleagues at the cafeteria whose heated discussions seemed to indicate that their only concern in life was retirement.
I was appalled.
I heard them counting the years and even the days to retirement, the pros and cons of the best pension packages on offer, and I couldn’t believe it. They sounded like Martians. To me, work came first, I was proud to be able to serve in the fight against poverty and hunger in the Third World.[....Life was not about retirement. A dirty word, in my mind, it evoked a vision of decrepit old people, sitting around all day long, doing nothing.
Oh, but now that I am myself retired, how that vision has changed!
I now realize that retirement is not a dirty word,though it is a difficult thing to handle.
First, in spite of what anyone tells you, retirement is not an eternal holiday. It is not about traveling the world and discovering new people. It can be that too (and it is fun, no doubt about it) but that is not the main point of it.
The cafeteria at my work place (FAO in Rome). Retirement is contemplating new opportunities...Retirement is a golden opportunity for a second career, a second life.
Yes, in retirement, life starts again, the way it did in our twenties when we started on our first job. And that is the catch.It is exactly as hard and challenging to enter the post-work phase of our life as it was to enter into our working life as a young adult.
We face the same harrowing questions. What should I do? What am I good for? What is my life all about? You thought you had shelved those questions forty or fifty years ago? Well, you discover that you are wrong.
...
The rest on Boomer Café, click here.
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I agree with you that retirement is an opportunity. An opportunity to not just travel and play, but an opportunity to work in new fields, to share knowledge gained from years of work, to contribute to one's own community, etc.
"Retirement" has come to denote for too many people a stage in life that is less active, less intellectually stimulating, more narcissistic, and more reclusive. For me, it has become an adventure grounded on a foundation of all the experiences and knowledge gained from the years before. I am busier now than ever before, I am more productive than ever before, and I have more to offer than ever before. I'm not "retired," I'm "engaged" in life.