Life after Retirement

Life is like a dream that one recalls in his brain. It is like a fast wind that comes for a limited period of time and shrugs away. An era of gold, brilliance, pure sincerity, hard work and contemporary life vanishes away and gets replaced by the rejuvenation of dull, slow, old, mundane and unexciting life. Brave souls and mortals, sometimes amazingly, at the age of 60 or 70, after missing the golden era of their lives and the moments, still cherish and smile. Surely, It is a fascinating approach when slowly one recalls the pure era of his life and then smiles at himself. An era when an individual behaved like a fog horn in a way as if he or she knew everything. I know it depends on an individual to what extent he is nostalgic, but a little nostalgia is embedded in the soul of every individual.

Retirement means many things to many people at different stages of their lives. It certainly means loss of an income, loss of authority, bleak days with no schedules, and wait for meals at home with no activity. I remember very well that when one of the elderly friends retired at the age of 60 years, it set despondency in his family. Then another friend and associate of mine reached superannuation and it visualized gloom for him also. By the time another one retired, I began to anticipate similar ether for myself. But the third friend did not get bowed down after his retirement and he started new activities in his life. Today when he meets me, I find him gleeful and happy and he usually relates to me that “My retirement was really an economic loss to me but it has given me alternate blessings”. He recounts that “I don’t suffer usually now from high blood pressure/ diabetic coercions, for the fact that I have enough time to go for exercise and long walks and feel mentally free and away from the stresses of official burden and other anxieties. I have now started devoting my maximum time in worship to God and the peace which I find there is real”. He quotes sometimes Shakespear: “Nothing is good or bad, thinking makes it so”.

The moment of retirement occurs in the life of a government, semi-government or corporate servant. It does not happen in the life of a businessman or a politician. But among the employed servants also three professionals remain active even after their formal adieu to their service. A medical doctor after retirement can start a new era by practising, treating patients. A teacher of any level can remain busy by teaching students. A law knowing officer can start a new life by practising in any judicial institution.

Retirement in our society becomes a stigma for the individual who retires from service. And right from the day he retires, he is treated as an aged, old and unenergetic fellow in the society. While as a businessman or politician even though reaches to the age of eighty years never gets stigmatized like this. It is this sense of culpability and complex among a class of employed servants, particularly the senior bureaucrats, that they join political parties where also the lucky ones bloom and the others only feel satisfied by being ‘busy’.

The syndrome of remaining busy among the retired servants is fast spreading in our society. The persons don’t only join political parties but toil very hard to even serve on inferior positions just to remain busy. (I cannot claim that I will not accept such offer after my retirement). One cannot ignore human weakness but there are people who live and have lived gracefully, event not getting busy, after relinquishing their official positions. I get reminded of another group of my three friends who enjoyed top positions during their services and after retirement did not accept re-appointments. One friend has devoted himself to the religious/ social schedules and I find him happier than those who have fallen prey to the “BUSY SYNDROME”. The other friend, who has welcomed his retirement, was indecisive for sometime about how to start and where to start his new adventure, and ultimately he dedicated himself towards making his offspring’s to settle down, and now I find him a happy person. The third friend is different and has accepted retirement as a chance to take rest, roam around the world and look after the family matters.

Certainly, it depends upon the individual himself or herself how to take a situation and how to feel about it. Retirement or bidding adieu to the part of life in discussion is a way of life because one should sturdily believe that death and superannuation are unbeatable things in one’s life. As one has to die, one has to retire, sooner or later. One needs to overcome any thoughts of gloom and look forward for a new chapter of life. Honours and benedictions are not everlasting but are temporary and are subject to short-life and decay like rosebuds. No deleterious attitude but positive and optimistic approach to life must be the dream of an individual.