Audio version if you prefer: 5:47

I have a proposition. Drop the word ‘retirement’. It’s not a good word. It doesn’t describe in any way what the post employed stage of our lives looks like. If a words job is to give meaning to what it is being used for the word ‘retirement’ is an absolute bust. And it comes with a whole lot of negative baggage. It’s just a lazy word.

Look it up. Among other synonyms for ‘retirement or retired’ you’ll find ‘shy’, ‘withdrawn’, ‘secluded’, ‘hidden’, ‘quiet’, ‘sheltered’ among others. And just to be sure I checked in the mirror just now and confirmed that is not me! And it’s not a minor thing. The vocabulary we choose to use or that is imposed on us is important. And it gets worse. I’ve long since completed the employed stage of my life but I can remember how I thought of retirement before it was my turn. It was some version of ‘The End’. Of course we celebrate The End with retirement parties and Happy Retirement cards and then most often never give our ‘retired’ work colleagues another thought. They are essentially discarded, thrown onto the Used Pile and forgotten, dismissed as not being particularly valuable any longer.

What an incredible waste it all is.

I watched a show recently called ‘Live to 100′, a series on longevity. The six part documentary searched for insight into how some pods of people in different parts of the world live very long lives, many of them centenarians. Now I know there are many factors but some observations struck me. One very old Japanese woman said she has never retired, she works everyday. There is I’m told no word in the Japanese language for ‘retirement’, at least on Okinawa where she lived. She was 104 and insisted that we should always work, even if that just meant tending her garden every day for two hours. She said that and laughing every day were the keys to her longevity. She stopped to tell the interviewer that laughter and ‘happiness’ were very important.

“I have a penis” she said in her broken English, the twinkle in her eye betraying her mischief.

“I have a-peen-is” she repeated just to make sure. It made her laugh. Me too.

It’s easy to dismiss her, the silly pratlings of an old person, perhaps. But I think not. She was engaged and active and seen and had value in her community of family and people. She was not retired and she most certainly was not retiring but she was fulfilled and she was happy.

I think we’ve had this wrong from the beginning in North America. ‘Retirement’ is the construct of a system that has a need to compartmentalize our lives and to name those compartments, a system that reports weekly on the number of people working, unemployed and leaving the work force. We do love our numbers. Our Working Lives and Retirement are just the vocabulary of that construct but they have no attachment to how fulfilled we are in our lives unless our lives can be reduced to working or not working. It is hopelessly inadequate but it is how we have been taught to think about it all. Not surprisingly we can end up very disappointed. So by extension, retirement becomes too important. At most it is just the end of a stage in our lives, the end not The End.

Okinawan’s focus their lives on ‘Ikagai’, a word which means ‘The reason you wake up in the morning.’ We have a word for that as well.

‘Fulfillment’.

We’ve been taught that the reason we wake up in the morning is to go to work, be late and suffer a consequence. For some of us work can be fulfilling but for the vast majority it is not. It is simply a bargain we strike that serves the needs of both parties to the transaction. I will work if you pay me. I will pay you if you work. Seems straightforward enough but that’s all it is. Fulfillment never was part of that bargain. It’s just a bonus if it happens.

Why else do millions of people all over the world who ‘retire’ continue to work? Sometimes it is for the obvious reason the need to earn some money. As often as not though it’s because we know that we must remain engaged to live meaningful lives. Work can be part of that. A small part. A very small part. Family, friendships, volunteering, personal health, so often the things we never had enough time for because we were working, now that is the stuff of fulfillment.

So just don’t ever ‘retire’. By all means quit working, give yourself the gift of space but just never retire. Live with purpose, fulfill personal needs, cultivate meaningful relationships and know why you wake up every morning.

You’ll know you’ve figured it out when you tell your friends and family,

“I have happiness.”

With a twinkle in your eye.