Retirement – Running into the Undiscovered Country

Racing the Reaper Man Forever: Autumn/Winter 2024

Retirement – Running into the Undiscovered Country

As autumn merges damply with winter, I’ve found myself brushing up my Shakespeare. Before you flee from this blog post, fear not, and bear with me awhile. You see, we use and see Shakespearean quotes throughout our lives, mostly without knowing it. From being eaten out of house and home to not sleeping a wink, each phrase can be traced to The Bard. To most of us the Undiscovered Country is the title of Star Trek VI, but in reality, was penned for the utterance of Hamlet. My point is, very often I check a saying and up pops Shakespeare. More phrases will be used here, but, as luck would have it, you don’t need to know where, it’s neither here, nor there.

The title of this blog is a result of me pondering my recent retirement. I settled upon the poetic mystery of the Undiscovered Country, ignoring the fact that Hamlet was speaking of the terrors of an afterlife, and I’ll be writing about the future – which is, sort of, the same. After all, we only fear the unknown, which is what the future is. However, the future is but an horizon – we never get there. We can only dream of the road that leads there and plan for the very best journey.

Retiring from a regulated working life is something I gave little thought to. I worked from the age of 15 to 67. More than 52 years in total, including 30 years of shift working, office hours, long days, early mornings and late nights. Time off was something to look forward to; to make plans for. Time for pleasure. So, with this in mind, retirement is a doddle, isn’t it? Waking up on day one without the immediate need to go out and earn a crust looks like such stuff as dreams are made of? I have found things are not so simple.

It has been discombobulating. Here’s the thing, whether I like it or not, I have a preset internal working-day-clock. It has evolved into my psyche, embedded itself into my circadian rhythms and is not easy to switch off or ignore. My working life was full of doing things to earn enough to do other things on my time off. Shopping, parenting, communicating and being part of the machine. I was controlling my life by rote, by effort, driven by the reward of utopia in the form of retirement, somewhere just over the horizon.

It was when I reached my mid-60s that I understood the horizon was never any closer. I had to find my way through extreme mental illness, physical illness and the loss of my son. The horizon, I found, was never a place to get to. Utopia was an ephemeral, undefined place. Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb provides the closest explanation to how I felt…

There is no pain you are receding
A distant ship, smoke on the horizon,
You are only coming through in waves,
Your lips move but I can’t hear what you’re saying.

When I was a child
I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye.
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown,
The dream is gone.
I have become comfortably numb.

Life is not an arrival, it is the journey that is important. That horizon is beyond the edge of one’s dreams. Yet, looking to the future and acting to realise one’s dreams, paves the road with beauty and colour. So, as I reached 68 I decided to scrap the embedded model of life, and turned a page. This is the act of clearing one’s mind of dogmatic, biased control mechanisms and looking for beauty. It means having no preconceived ideas of the future, that Undiscovered Country, and ignoring time as the enemy. It is not a rapid process, but if one wants to live life to the full, the past must only be a memory, not an anchor. Taking time to think is the first step. I’m still processing things over half-a-year on.

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so

By July this year, I had survived almost everything life could throw at a person. Life weighed heavily upon me. I had become trapped into remembering what was, and looked at what I could have done better. Instead of using those moments as a lesson for the future, I found myself brooding. Not a very helpful state of mind. It just wasn’t me. I was letting negative thoughts hold me back. I needed to give my mind freedom.

Socrátes said, “Beware the barrenness of a busy life.” Now, that is an oxymoron worth unraveling. All becomes clear if you think about your life from school to retirement. Studying to become qualified to work to live. We laud a good work ethic, diligence and completing tasks on time – before time, even. Work, home, housework, out-out to play hard, to barely recover before it’s work again. We are in control, aren’t we? Nope. It is the illusion of control. I’ve done this most of my life.

Some years ago, when I was a new manager working long hours to keep my career on track, with little time for much else (I had a ‘great work ethic’), I had an epiphany, of sorts. This was down to Steve, a lovely gay colleague and friend, who worked in the office next to mine. He was quite a philosopher. One day he leaned against my office door frame, his usual languid self, eying me with mischievous eyes.
“What are your dreams for the future?” He asked.
“Hmmm. I want to climb above 7000m in the Himalayas; travel to all continents; write a book; see a kākāpō; run an ultramarathon,” I answered.
“What have you done today to make those dreams come true?” He smiled.
I was flummoxed. I tried to waffle about wages and saving and such blandishments, but I suddenly realised I’d done nothing. Had done nothing but leave my dreams somewhere over the horizon. Steve’s words come back to me very often.

Since then, I have made sure I’ve done at least one thing a day to turn my dreams into reality. It meant clearing my mind to think freely. For me, running is my path to meditation, to mindfulness. When I run, and I can strive with things impossible. The rhythm becomes a mantra; focusing on the act of running gives me insight to how I’m feeling; after a time my mind wanders where it will. I am still learning about myself. Running for a long time, raises this focus to a new level. This free-form thinking has allowed me to look at the future as an adventure, not a dark land of terror. It enabled me to express myself. What you see now is who I am.

Socrátes also stated, “Question everything.” Do not accept other people’s direction without looking at their motives. Think freely about what is said to you. Any philosophy that robs you of yourself, of your identity is heavily flawed. If you cannot express who you truly are because the burden of imposed dogma and bigotry, stepping into that Undiscovered Country is impossible. Equally, if anyone says they know what the future is, based on dogma and ideology, they are liars of the worst kind. Rid yourself of these toxic people. Being shackled to poison will not go well.

This view of being has to be driven by a positive outlook for the self, and kindness to the world around. Expressing oneself gives you control of who you are, not power over others. Projecting happiness and positivity really does change the world around you. As Spike Milligan said, a smile is infectious and a single one can spread around the world.

One final thing about free-thinking, it cannot be done for you. This is where I write about social media, memes, and the general staring at a screen. I love the accessibility of information in this modern age. I grew up at a time of relative ignorance of what was happening. It took time to research things and time to come to a considered opinion. 50 years on and things have flipped completely. News and information are instantaneous and opinions are formed without much consideration. We live in a time of lazy thinking – rather like fast food, fast information is not very good for the body and mind. ‘Thinking’ seems to be done for us, should we take things as said. Expression has faltered for a majority, and ‘In-spression’ has started to dominate. In-spression is a word I had to make up for this blog. It means expressing the thoughts and ideas of others as a means of belonging to a sought authority. In short, lazy thinking – you find something out there to confirm your bias, then stop thinking and spew out the raddled information of others. It also goes for dogma – if you have to consult a single ‘magical’ book to find out how to act, you are not free. Enough said.

My long sickness of health and living now begins to mend

Running and fitness has given me a close rapport with my body. Life is finite, so investing in my body comes top of my priorities. What is more important to invest in? After ridding myself of those who wished me harm, I’ve started to heal. After getting rid of negative thoughts, my well-being has followed a positive path. Can you rebuild yourself as you get older? Yes. It takes honesty, effort and acceptance.

Kintsugi (literally, ’golden joinery’), is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver or platinum. As a philosophy, it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise. It is the asymmetric whole that is regarded as beautiful. Wabi-sabi is a Japanese aesthetic that finds beauty in things imperfect, impermanent and incomplete. These two things fit what I’m trying to say.

My body is now repaired and I’m getting fitter, though my immune system remains fragile. My mind has begun to heal, but I am different. I’m changed. I have found a third part of me that has been damaged. My emotional self. The simplest way to express this is to say I have a broken heart. That ocean of emotions that infiltrates all physical and mental processes, is one part I have only partial control over. Anger – I can regulate. Fear – I can adjust. But grief – it is an ebbing and flowing tide with no regulator. It is these cracks that model my kintsugied rebirth.

It would be pointless regretting the changes, so I’ve learnt to like the newer me. Physical and mental scars cannot be hidden, so I see them as proof of a life lived. There is beauty in that acceptance.

With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come

Since my retirement in April, I’ve had to confront my automated habits. It will take time to adjust to my new life, free from employment. It is taking time for me to understand grief and the affect grieving has on me. Physically I’m robust. Mentally I am fragile. It is this latter condition that I’ve been thinking about. I think I’ve found a method that works. Laughter.

I chose not to use antidepressants during the last couple of traumatic years. This is a conscious, personal decision. At all times I’ve worked with my GP. I’d advise anyone to do what is safest for them, guided by a professional. At my lowest, I tend to turn to comedy. All I need to do is listen to Billy Connolly and I forget everything negative. A quick Spike Milligan sketch boosts my fun quotient. Apparently, laughter causes serotonin and endorphins to increase in the brain and decreases stress hormones. As the perfect companion to free-thinking, laughter completely engages the body and releases the mind.

Some people can make you sad. Some people make you happy. Some people make you laugh. Laughter is self-perpetuating, so laughter becomes a feast. Again, freedom to express oneself will make you happy – anyone who doesn’t like you doing this is probably not happy with themselves in the first place.

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves

In what is called the Free World, there can be a lot of invisible shackles. True freedom of expression is not always celebrated. There is a tendency to allow celebrity to guide us – in opinion, fashion, lifestyle and in the stuff we buy. But people on screens project an image – an approved cartoon stereotype of reality.

I see celebrity somewhat cynically. Shallow. Entertaining, but not a thing upon which to base a life. On screen, people are just a head atop a clothed torso. The head is their identity. The body is something to hide away, or camouflage. The message is distorted by hyperbole. It tends to be the facial image that draws a viewer. Although there seems to be more inclusivity than there was, this has led to a drift towards normalising unhealthy habits and the medical issues that go with them. The message that tends to be gleaned is, do what you want – it is a free society, keep looking here and we’ll give you the message you desire. The exceptions are those with information that is of the greatest benefit. Sir David Attenborough jumps to mind.

Ultimately, unless one is unfortunate enough to have a chronic illness or severe injury, we each hold the future of our health and fitness in our own hands. The future is much brighter if you decide to be healthy and fit. Why settle for anything less? Why gamble one’s future away whilst one is young? Young doesn’t last long. Much to my chagrin, I looked up ‘elderly’ the other day. In most medical and legal spheres, one becomes one of the elderly generation at 65! Bastards! But what does it matter?

I decided a long time ago, that I would enter older age with no excuses. The horizon I’m moving towards is still there as on unattainable dream, but the journey ahead is still to make. I’m whole, but repaired rather like a kintsugied pot. The scars and cracks are visible, but to me they have beauty. They show a life lived, and the joins in metaphorical gold are stronger than the original pot. That wear and tear, the wabi-sabi of my life, has not beaten me. A broken heart need not be a lead weight, and for me it never will be. It has given me a greater understanding of the need to be kind.

My emotional-self, that primal well of indescribable feelings, has added to my wisdom. It is helping me to steer my way towards the Undiscovered Country. There is no darkness but ignorance, so I will light my way by learning, by learning acquire knowledge, and through knowledge attain wisdom.

I’ll leave you with the knowledge that there really was a lot of Shakespeare throughout this blog, and with a quote for my Passepartout – I would not wish any companion in the world but you.