When the downward spiral escalates
A client was recently talking about her concerns for her mother. Since her mother retired 3 years ago, my client has noticed a precipitous decline in her health and overall functioning. Her mom doesn’t dress as well as she used to. She isn’t as involved in following activities in the world. She complains more than she ever did. And she is getting noticeably more feeble and developing lots of conditions of aging.
Her mom is a woman who never was a traditional stay-at-home mom. She became a medical specialist at a time when it was rare for women to become doctors and she maintained an active practice until well after the traditional retirement age of 65.
What gives you might ask. Lack of meaning in her life I’d be inclined to answer. My client’s mom is experiencing an escalation in the downward spiral that we typically attribute to aging. “What can you expect?” we say to ourselves. “The woman is in her 70’s.” But we easily ignore all the people who are still vibrant at the same age. And it is very easy to dismiss the speed with which decripitude has set in.
I know many others for whom medical issues develop amazingly quickly after they leave the workforce. And it doesn’t seem to matter whether the leaving happens in their 50s, 60s or 70s. These folks frequently claim that they love their life of leisure, being able to get up when they feel like it, travel at whim and will, lunching or dining as the mood strikes. And never once questioning the link between their failing health and the fact that they are no longer really of use to anyone. Research is beginning to show that there is a strong link between retirement and onset on the diseases of aging.
When are we going to get it? We can sit back and say that it is because people don’t stay fit or have eaten a lousy diet most of their adult lives and it is finally catching up. Or we can begin to consider that there is a link between feeling useful and having a sense of purpose and our health.
I don’t know about you, but I’m beginning to become very tired and bored of hearing the same old, same old conversation amongst people 5 years away from retirement: I can’t wait to hit the golf course/garden/sailboat whenever I want; it is going to be so wonderful when my days are my own; life will be glorious when I no longer have a boss breathing down my neck. …Don’t these people read? Don’t they look around at the folks who’ve proceeded them and notice that the ones really having a good time have started businesses, gotten part-time jobs, created volunteer work for themselves?
Maybe we are all colluding with one another, just like we’ve colluded most of our lives. If you don’t pretend to notice how old I’m looking, I won’t tell you how awful it feels to think about spending another 25 or 30 years with nothing more profound than another golf game or fishing expedition to look forward to.
A good friend of mine shared privately with me that she’s becoming embarrassed to go shopping with her husband. He’s been retired several years now and he’s turning into one of those old men who can’t shut up in stores. He chats the ear off any sales associate or check-out clerk, telling long stories and anecdotes where 5 years ago he’d have paid his bill, wished them a nice day and gotten on with his life. When not haunting the stores he spends much of his time working out to keep the physical plant in shape, but it is clear to her that his social skills and his mental frame of reference have been negatively impacted since his retirement. She’s trying to convince him to get a part-time job before he becomes the geezer dreaded by every retail clerk in the vicinity!
If you haven’t yet retired, I exhort you to seriously give thought to what is going to give purpose and meaning to your life when work is no longer there. Even if you hate your job and can’t wait to leave, do not overlook this profoundly important examination. If you are recently retired, be honest with yourself before you wake up one day and discover that your blood pressure has sky-rocketed, your hearing is going, you have heart palpitations or skin lesions or arthritis. From what I can see, the downward spiral sets in amazingly quickly. I’d feel remiss if I weren’t extremely forthright and direct about this aspect of retirement that nobody seems to want to talk about!
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