Life In The Slow Lane:
The terminational years (retirement years) can be relaxing and contented IF your health holds up, you are financially secure, and you understand correctly your own peculiar needs. Lot of IFs. IF you had a safe and supportive childhood (the formative years) and successful productive years, then right therein you lose the right to complain. IF one can add to this relaxed and contented terminational years, then you have hit a grand slam---you have run the table.
The rest of this musing you might want to skip because it is all about me, me, me. Unless you have known me, and even then, all this self analyzation may be a bit over the top.
When I retired I kind of determined to avoid anymore pushing and shoving for anything, to generate my own lifestyle as independent of others as possible, and to measure the worth of any personal activity based on the degree or relaxation or contentment derived from that activity. I think too many my age let others control their agenda. Then again, maybe many, if not most people, like to have others control much of their agenda. Without that they are lonely. What the hell, it's all good if it turns out good. Sometimes I list a lot of people I know and ask myself, "would I rather be in their shoes?". In the end the answer is always no because there are certain aspects of their lives with which I would not like to be saddled. Are there aspects of my own life I would like to dump? I suppose, but considering the total picture this would be nitpicking. In general, my lifestyle now is about where I would like it to be at this stage of my life.
I don't feel very competitive about anything these days. I have always been a 'live and let live' sort of person and these days even more so. It really doesn't matter much anymore what kind of plays are being run on the field, what the score is, who is winning, etc. I am in the grandstands watching, not playing. I can root for select people on the playing field (like Barack or Terrell) but I don't feel personally effected by their success or failure. It is the younger generation who need control the game, call the right plays, and live with the outcome. Life sure makes a difference when you understand your days are numbered, maybe 10 or at most 20 years of an increasingly reduced self 'being'. We change, some more than others all our life---I like to view it as becoming more educated, more erudite----although there are people who haven't changed their religious beliefs or politics their entire life, some sort of fortuitous inheritance I guess. But the changes in our terminational years are different. For the first time we are not becoming stronger, more important, or any of the other attributes that came with the productive years. For real, at my age, you are heading downstream mentally and physically. The GOAL is to go gently down the stream.
So far, for me, an aloof philosophical milieu fits like a glove. I try to keep things simple, and relish the time available to write, to poke around, to read, to enjoy the wonders of nature, to chat with certain people, and to proceed along at whatever pace I feel like. I don't even have a regular pattern of sleep. I usually go to bed somewhere between midnight and 3 AM. I am up anywhere from 7-9 AM. If I tire during the day I take a nap. In the morning I like to write or do paperwork. By noon I am ready to eat and I do so like a pig. Each day I try to fit in a 3 mile walk, usually at Danada (a horse stable/forest preserve---I feed carrots to the horses) or Cantigny (the estate of former Robert McCormick, the founder of the Chicago Tribue) or Morton Arboretum or a forest preserve down the street. I also like to listen to a taped lecture (around 30 min) on some sort of philosophy. I get these lecture series (by respected Professors) and listen to one tape in the lecture series each day). When the weather permits I like to go into Chicago once a week and just poke around. I do a lot of people watching and sometimes chat with assorted people of interest, and sometimes take in a museum. I eat out 2 or at most 3 times a week. Most of the time I go out to eat by myself since I don't make up my mind what kind of food I want until afternoon. In a condo like where I live, there are more than enough people to do things with to whatever extent you want to do them. Once a year I like to hike trails in the Redwood forests of California. Between 6-8 PM I like to watch on TV the News Hour with Lehrer followed by Chicago Tonight, both on Public Television. I never watch network news, On the News Hour the main issues of the day are discussed by those with differing viewpoints. I like that, get to make up my own mind on matters. Sometimes I watch the Leno monologue and Headlines. Sometimes I watch the opening monologue of Craig Ferguson (base nonsense). I try to read about a dozen books a month, often take them with me when I am in the forests, or eating out. or on the train to Chicago. I try to keep a book with me so that there will not be times of boredom at any point. Most of the topics for my musings come to me in the morning when I wake up. At night, when I go to bed, I put on music and set a timer for it to go off in 30 min. I rarely hear it go off.
The hardest thing is to find time to clean my condo. It is easy enough, but the will to do it as often as I should is lacking. I also chat on the phone too much. I like to cook, but don't do enough innovative cooking. There are certain things I especially like to eat and tend often to go with what I know I like rather than risk experimenting. I try not to eat meat more than every other day. If I go up 3 lbs in weight then, with great effort, I cut back a bit on the amount I eat. Left to my own I would be the fattest little piggy, and not a cute little piggy either. I also subscribe to Netflix for $16.99/mo and at that deal watch about 3-4 movies a week. Their deal with the post office is amazing, it is rare for a movie to take more than one day to get back or to get to me when they send it out. If it goes out on Tues, I always get it on Wed. I usually watch the movies in the evening. If it doesn't hold my interest in 10 minutes I either eject it or fall asleep.
Maybe once or twice a year I will attend a play, but these are held in this little off beat stage in Chicago. You can almost touch the performers. Perhaps once a month I have Brandon and Jennifer over for dinner---a yng couple who kind of keep an eye on me. I never invite anyone else for dinner because I am through entertaining, and in fact---my living room seats 4, no couch etc.---so that removes any possibility of my even attempting any large gathering. Any socialization now pretty much involves going some where with others or eating out with others and maybe a little chatting afterwards at someone's home. The others is never a large number. Gatherings of larger groups I avoid with a passion. Everyone is on stage, nothing gets discussed in any depth---most all conversation is endless cleverisms---and when the dust settles you have spent the evening mostly learning unimportant trivia about a lot people you seldom interact with in any meaningful way. Frankly, I can't even get motivated to tell them anything meaningful about me either, thus I am in the same mindset with everyone else.
I get involved a little bit with condo matters behind the scene, but I repeat often to those who forget that "I am retired". Let the younger people in their productive years handle contentious stuff. No matter the activities which occupy anyone's terminational years, what matters is how you feel about yourself and circumstances. It seems many people have trouble in their terminational years letting go of responsibility. Not me. If I sense responsibility around the corner, I change directions. Same with personal interactions----to the extent anyone is kind to me, I am kind to them; to the extent anything about me is annoying to them, I yield to them the validity of their annoyance and leave them in peace. It is not smart to spend your terminational years being an annoyance to anyone else. If someone has a personality or habits unappealing to me I leave them be. Fair is fair. I mean really, why waste time on matters involving feelings, not objective matters. I think a lot of older people twist themselves into a pretzel attempting to please others, mostly out of fear they don't become lonely in their old age. The truth is, the longer you live the more 'lonely' you will become, and if you live long enough, the real you---the 'being' that was really you most of your life---will slowly evaporate before everyone's eyes. "I'll warn you, when you meet Honschnivel you will find is he not the person he used to be, you'll think he a different person." We've all experienced that and it is sad. But sad to who? If the terminational 'sub-being' is cheerful and pleasant, then he/she is coping well and all is well. Leaving the responsibility to your spouse or kids or friends, etc to be your lifeline to contentedness in old age is a poor gamble. One spouse will outlive the other, kids will be busy with their productive years, and friends die or become irrelevant to your daily life. If ever there is any truth to 'living a life of your own', it is the terminational years. And life during your terminational years is in your mind. Many of the activities which bought you pleasure in earlier years are physically impossible while satisfactions that came earlier from power or money or control are gone with the wind. Modern science has stretched out the dying process for some people a proverbial eternity. We all know people who have exhausted themselves caring for an elderly parent 2, 3, 4 decades. A sincere sense of duty drives them on, and poof, before they know it, half their productive years were spent performing such duty. Some thrive on it, others are drained and to varying degrees bitter about it.
So much in life is relative. Having no kids, and no spouse eliminates any tendency for me to rely on others for my contentedness in old age. Plus, I had two parents who lived to 89 and 97---and never became a burden on anyone---not financially, not in terms of daily care, not emotionally, and were a pleasure to visit at a very old age. I can still remember my dad endlessly cautioning my mom never to let either of them become a burden to their kids. In essence, at a relatively young age he turned the duty around. No one ever asked him to, he just did. When I was young he told me after 18 I was on my own. And he meant it. If there was an apron string dangling out somewhere, I never found it. While he never provided financial support for my brother or me during our productive years, what he did was to financially ensure neither my brother or I would be financially or socially burdened by he or my mother during our productive years. And they never were. Looking back, it was a kind of gift that was immeasurably valuable. Admittedly, there was an unforeseen ace-in-the hole lying in wait. I had a niece whose companionship with my mom gave my mom the strength to be independent and stay cheerful to the end. Every aging situation is different.
Seemingly, too much of old age for many oldsters is spent in fear of death. It is irrational to fear death since there are no options. You'll never get out of this world alive. In fact, being born is an ominous sign for future death. Birth has sealed your fate. Thus, part of the terminational years involves accepting the inevitable. To me, while death is inevitable, there are good deaths and bad deaths----and usually a person can have substantial control over their dying process---if they choose to. Unfortunately, somehow a good number of religious leaders in the past got the notion only God decides when a person dies, and to tamper with His decision is a sin. Now I would be the last one to challenge God on any issues. But when the Pat Robertson mentalities (God talks to them) get these personal messages and then declare for themselves the right then to tell the rest of us what is revealed TRUTH, I balk. History has clearly shown so many of these self appointed messengers from God to be not only full of shit on occasion but capable of just about every major universally accepted ethical lapse imaginable. And really, to suggest that God, with all His power and intellect, would attempt to deliver a universal mandate to all humanity by whispering this mandate to a select member of a certain religion is patently absurd. It reduces God to some kind of bumbling incompetent idiot.---and one who cares only for a certain flock of believers. I see God as the author of an evolutionary process which is not only amazing, but a self propelled process that enables life over eons of time to progress ever so slowly to higher and higher levels of life. As part of this process humans acquired the ability to reason. This ability to reason enables individual humans to affect their own destiny to some degree. It seems we start with an innate understanding of basic right and wrong. From there we apply this basic understanding to modern situations by using common sense and current state of scientific understanding. By what logic or motivation would anyone conclude God directs us to suffer an agonizing death---to live past the point life has become a burden to any individual? What kind of God do such people worship? If anything is personal, the dying process certainly is.
Ever so slowly, more and more people are beginning to reject this sadistic view of God and allow individuals to control their own dying process---at the time or via prior written instructions. To have control over your own dying process removes much of the fear of death. I think most people fear the kind of dying process more than death itself. The ethics involved in sustaining the archaic view of God insisting on humans having no control over their own dying process is simply absurd. God alone determines when you die UNLESS you want to prolong your life with modern medicine and that then is OK. That's odd logic. Such logic declares it is ok to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars to force someone to live a few months longer and neglect the needs of vast numbers of kids who have an entire life ahead of them. I reject that unethical mentality unequivocally. If I have a desire to die painlessly at some point and leave my inheritance to those in need, with a life still ahead of them, or not spend tax money to keep me alive a few more months, then I insist this is the kind of moral decision I should be able to make. Why should the government or someone else's religious beliefs interfere? It is hard to really respect people who think their own religious beliefs should be the law of the land. If they want to spend that kind of money to keep themselves alive a few more months so be it, I would not stop them. What kind of ethics says you can remove a feeding tube or breathing machine, but not put a person quietly to sleep like you would your pet, but instead dope them up and watch them either starve to death or suffocate to death? This seems more like something right out of the Stone Age. There is nothing wrong with the old Hemlock slogan, "Good life, good death". I think the goal of all societies should be to maximize good lives and good deaths.
I suspect, for most terminational people, life in the slow lane is the best route to go. Stop and smell the flowers, reflect on life in all its aspects, perhaps for the first time in life you have the time to really observe and listen and feel the pains and viewpoints of diverse populations, to put together into a completed puzzle all the pieces you have picked up along the way in your own life. In this process you not only become more tolerant, more appreciative of simpler things in life, and more sympathetic with human struggles everywhere, but you find a kind of inner peace which enables you to go gently down the stream to oblivion, grateful for your existence in a 'little gleam of Time between two eternities'.
