This week, I had the pleasure of filling a customised card order - a retirement gift.
While retirement may mean the end of a long and fulfilling career, it is also the beginning of a new way of life, and along with this, there are many potentially exciting discoveries waiting to be made.
Many previously postponed trips or activities that were deemed to be too time-consuming can at last be undertaken; one can spend long stretches of time with old friends and loved ones without being bound by the constraints of a workday.
Perhaps in a way the card's sentiment is also a reflection of how our busyness at work (or is it our mindset?) stops us from living the life we envision? When we are busy meeting our responsibilities at work, home or school, how close are we to living the life we aspire for ourselves?
Do we feel constrained by what we spend a big part of our day doing and using the lack of time or energy as excuses, put our hobbies, relationships and passions on the backburner?
Maybe when work winds down, when we save enough money to leave the job or... when we retire? Then there'll be opportunities to do what we've always wanted - pick up that hobby, climb the mountain, travel round the world...
Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project suggests that when a person is truly passionate about his work, he will gladly spend not just his actual working hours, but also his moments of leisure thinking about it or pursuing activities related to it. How many of us truly experience this luxurious state? Instead, do we spend a large part of our lives working at a job that no longer excites us but are too scared to move on because of the financial security it offers?
Some, like this couple, Betsy and Warren, have transformed their lives to pursue their passion of travel while others, like Courtney, is a 'retiree' from the corporate world who advocates living a life of minimalism filled definite purpose.
Whatever your approach (or your job), let us start living the way we imagine today and not wait till tomorrow, next year or till the day of retirement.
Sheon
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