Beyond Retirement!

According to the definition at Wikipedia, “retirement” is the point where a person stops employment completely. A person may also semi-retire by reducing work hours.

Although our age-group is in mid fifties; still away from the retirement age (varies in different countries) yet the retirement blues has already begun haunting us to explore things we will be doing or ought to be doing to keep ourselves busy, productive and living beyond this ill-fated cutoff date. The retirement affects the life of all generally but its impact is severe on those who work in public sector particularly.

You were conditioned for more than 30 years to wake up early, have a cup of tea while scrolling eyes on the newspaper, and getting ready for office. Now, imagine the very first weekday of post retirement; no chauffer driven official car is awaiting you outside, no telephone calls to reach immediately for a meeting, in fact no one waits at office for you. You are free. You are redundant. You are surplus. An indispensable and industrious person just a day earlier has suddenly been rendered nonfunctional, if not dysfunctional. The cruel world took no time to adjust working without you; declare you a senior citizen.

This happens to be your longest day of life when there’s nothing to be done, and there’s nothing you want to do either. This very first and longest day of post retirement life makes you aged by some more years instantly. The shock is nonabsorbent. Soon you would meet another upsetting revelation that your spouse does not like you to meddle in the household discipline that she has been maintaining for decades. She would rather advise you to spend daytime equivalent to office hours of 9 to 5 doing something, anything, which keeps you outside of her kingdom. 

It is generally believed that people cannot live long and healthy life once they are retired. Perhaps, the abrupt shock of becoming worthless in an overnight is killing. This disappointing impact gets minimized if one is enjoying a large family under the same roof. Presence of spouse, grownup children and grand children can be a great solace to offset the retirement blues.

So, how and what do we foresee doing after retiring from active office life? Here are some of the options you may like to get engaged into:

• Reemployment; this is the best one if you feel physically strong, mentally active and fit. Your employer may not necessarily agree with your opinion in the entirety, though.
• Enjoying old age benefits.
• Turning entrepreneur investing your savings in some business like real estate construction, doing small businesses, part time teaching etc.
• Besides reading habits, you may like to begin writing and contributing to print and electronic media, etc.
• Engage yourself in household works; gardening, helping spouse in the kitchen and performing school pick & drop duty for grand children.
• Enjoy travelling around the world out of your retirement savings.
• Investing all of your money, if still safe from your grownup children and grand children, into saving banks for a fixed monthly return on it to meet your medical bills and other needs.
• Making your life-long dream come true; putting all money into buying/building your own house and then enjoying the peaceful life. Nevertheless, be financially dependent on your children, forever.
• Getting fully involved into religious activities, and doing some social work, and
• Living a depressive, melancholic and solitary (or with spouse) life where your only worthwhile asset is sweet memories.

While reminiscing the past we may find ourselves contented with the course of events unfolded during our life time and we made decisions accordingly, yet few of us may regret taking some crucial decisions that landed them into a future entirely different from what they had perceived about.

We cannot figure it out how exactly our post retirement life would take its course but the dominant factor would be the waiting; waiting for the ultimate happening i.e. departure from this world peacefully and calmly. Almost all of us live an ordinary life under a small circle of family and friends. As we seldom remember our grandparents, our grandchildren would also take no time to forget us. Some 70-80 years of our vibrant life trying to make an impact on this world would end with hardly anyone missing it.

Like millions, dead and forgotten earlier, we will also fade away, for sure.