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Five Key Observations about Retirement Carol Rahn Class of ’72 Speakers’ Program 20 February 2022 The first and most important point to be made about retirement is stay healthy and don’t run out of money. Unfortunately, at least one of those things is going to go wrong and for some of us it’s already a struggle. I retired about 10 years ago – I’m one of the few women I know who managed to maintain a corporate career until retirement. My last job was the only job I took, not because it captured my imagination, but because it fulfilled an ambition. And the job was ok, but for various reasons I didn’t feel I was as useful or as effective as I wanted to be. Without boring you with the decision-making process, I chose to retire. Of course retiring did not solve the problem of needing to feel useful. And the mix of skills, habits and character that got me where I was – and no further – didn’t change. My second observation is that you’re still you and what you want and need from retirement may not be as different as you expect I would go further: retirement is no longer “post career.” It has become just another stage in your career and it can be as competitive as any other stage. It’s only that the axes have changed and now the unspoken competition might be about how much you’re contributing to your community or how much fun you’re having with your grandchildren. What’s great about retirement? ? Not commuting
What’s not so great? For someone like me who tends to be an introvert, all that built-in sociability of working was a godsend. I was working with a lot of terrific people all over the world. Suddenly, that was gone. Since then, I did become involved in various projects and I have built a much more local network. It’s not uncommon for me to walk down the street and run into people I know, something that rarely happened when I was working. But the network is not as dense as it used to be. Also gone is the built-in teamwork that is part of so many kinds of work: the way organisations celebrate collective achievement and individual contribution. If you still want those things, you have to go look for them. For someone like me, who has always been so responsible and such a hard worker but who underneath it all is a bit of a procrastinator, and rather timid -- I might not miss the structure and the deadlines of working, but I need both of them and now I have to engineer them. Thus my third key point is this: when you retire, it is much more down to you. There are far fewer constraints, but a lot less support. When we retire, most of what we will accomplish is behind us. Retirement just makes that official. Did you have a retirement party? Did the thought just possibly flit across your mind that your next major milestone could be your funeral? If you’re already retired, does it ever bother you, all those forms or surveys with a long list of occupations and then that big bucket labelled “retired”? This is a clear suggestion that whatever you know and whatever you did is no longer relevant. Yet you may, like me, protest “I’m not done yet.” You may, like me, be all too aware of the gap between what you would still like to make happen and what you know yourself to be capable of. Certainly, we are running out of time. My fourth observation is that ambivalence is to be expected. We need neither deny that nor succumb to it. And finally -- just living is remarkably time consuming and hugely enjoyable. I would not trade this phase for any other in my life. This informal career called retirement can go on for 20 years. What we need and want, our strengths and weaknesses, aren’t likely to change radically, although there may be some surprises, good and bad, when the constraints and supports are removed.
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