General Colin Powell, Former Chairman
of The Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. military command once said, “If you
are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little
matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude.” On the
day he retired from that position he told how there was much pomp and
circumstance with marching bands and troops after which he was taken by his
driver in his usual chauffeured car to his home. The car dropped him and drove
off and he entered his house as husband and dad. It was all over. The
excitement and respect of being the toast of the town was behind him, and now
he was simple toast!
Retirement, for this reason is not
what it is all cracked up to be. Whatever we have worked at in our professional
lives has kept us busy and defined who we are. The busier we were and the more
critical the position we held the more fulfilled we were. When all that
suddenly stops it’s as though the ground opened up from under us.
My card reads under my name for
description of who I am, “Consultant.” In my retirement function I was an accountant/and account
manager in that I managed as many as seventeen reinsurance companies. Now I am
a consultant. People who receive my card ask what is my speciality?. At first I
had to answer, I consult with whoever has a question I can answer. Later I came
to make myself useful for new families who had moved to Spain, guiding them
away from making expensive mistakes. That is the point entirely; to make
ourselves useful by employing our experience to be of service.
For the retiree to suddenly move from
big shot to nothing is a major shock. He no longer has to wear a necktie or a
suit. He moves about and is all but invisible. Conventional wisdom has it that
in this state he will surely drop dead within five years of being nobody,
unless he worries about it. Should he worry he will drop dead in three years.
Men and women need not stop at
retirement, but rather we need to simply change gears. Perhaps we might change
to doing something we like rather than the money earner as before. Above all we
must keep our brains alive and active. Some things in life must be constantly
used or we lose them.
Everyone who lives long enough to
retire has a lifetime of experience to draw on and those who are younger than
us would benefit from our collected knowledge. Therefore, rather than facing a
period in our lives towards the end when we become nothing, just sitting around
waiting for death to take us, let’s keep busy in any way we can, especially by
keeping our minds busy.
Hint: Revisit your life and write
about it to provide your family with a historical record. We have all lived
through a period of constant change. If like me you came on the scene around
the beginning of the Second World War, we have lived through that horrible
period and then into a period of peace and renewal and into the beginning of
the computer age, which is when rapid change began.
When presidents or kings and queens
retire they turn their attention to developing their memoires, so we as
individuals might like to do the same. After all, our lives are just as
important. By writing about your life you can justifiably call yourself "Author."
Happy writing!
Copyright © 2018
Eugene Carmichael
