Here below is a comment left by Chris Y. My response ended up being quite long, and interesting perhaps. So I’ve copied in both comments here so they don’t get lost in the comment section.
From Chris:
Thank you. Wonderfully timely as always, Reverend Mugo, since I am about to give up the day job… And how much time evaporates just wandering round websites and following links! In search of what exactly?! Well, support I guess. The feeling that there are indeed others out there on similar journeys. What a wonderful resource (in its rightful place!) the web can be for us.
From Mugo:
Just a wave to you Chris. The matter of retirement is very much up there at the moment. So I am glad that you find some timely contributions here on Jade. I hope in the future there will be posts talking directly to the training aspects of retirement.
It does seem to take some time to settle to a different kind of day, with different kinds of contact with ones human family. The real tendency it would seem is to fill up that gaping hole of a day with all sorts of getting-busy-and-productive stuff. Even really great stuff like furthering ones interests and education. (Grandchildren, it would seem, are a bottomless pit of demands on retirees time.)
Perhaps, if it’s possible, it’s good to give oneself time and space to be uncomfortable. Lonely. Unproductive. And in the midst see what comes out of that gap time. Everybody has to live their life, retired or no. It is the real freedom to make the choices, when not under the influence of the mourning of ones working life still fresh in ones being, that can liberate and move one onwards. This all takes time, and patience.
I see retirement as a doorway which takes awhile to walk through, perhaps a passage more than a door. Once through the living is right and as it should be. A time for the fruits of mature experience to be broadcast as seeds. No matter that they germinate and grow – you are over all of that after all. Retirement can be walked as lightly as a child walks. Do we accumulate years? What does that mean? In practice.
I heard on the radio that 60 is the new 40. And, since I have just turned 62 and feel better than I did at 42, I can vouch for something of the truth of this.
Yes, and I have edited and added to my original comment.