Is it Time to Retire? Finding A Meaningful Life After Ending a Teaching Career

I can’t imagine a more complex and challenging time to think of retiring than today. When I retired from teaching, I felt I was doing what people had done forever. I was 65 and had reached an age where change and slowing down was needed. But now, as I try to empathically feel what a teacher might be experiencing as they contemplate retirement, I’m filled with such contradictory feelings.

 

We might be retiring because we’re exhausted. Our job, our whole profession has been attacked for years. We might feel unsafe due to the pandemic and the inadequate response by our school district to that pandemic. We might be retiring because we’re sick of hearing from people, possibly parents, who don’t want their children to be educated in history, particularly the history of racism in the U. S., or about global warming, democracy or whatever.

 

And maybe, it is just that time. We’ve experienced a challenging era and survived; hopefully, we feel fulfilled, that we’ve helped so many people. And it’s just time to move on to another phase of our lives.

 

But what troubles many of us is what will we do with ourselves once we no longer have such a busy life? I noticed this fear myself, but it turned out to be mostly a fear of the unknown speaking. Every retiree I know has told me finding something positive to do was not a problem.

 

Yet, it’s best if we retire to something not from something. As a teacher, we are a person with a calling to help others. This doesn’t end when the job ends, although taking care of ourselves can now come first.

 

Steps to Take:

 

Since the world has been so tough lately, one of the first things we can do is heal….

 

**To read the post, please go to MindfulTeachers.org.

The Fruits of Our Actions: Transforming Self and World

Wouldn’t it be nice if people who seem awful to us got their “just” rewards? If bullies and thieves were stopped and punished and we got to see the punishment? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if narcissistic rulers who ripped off their nation and committed acts of inhumanity were taken from the White House to the jail house? Oh, if only. But it’s obvious that it doesn’t always work that way, at least not in our personal timeline ⎼ except maybe in the section of our imagination reserved for wishes and dreams. …..

 

A Meditation on Taking Action

 

And when the rage and the fear and the tears about the state of the world breaks through, or when the despair threatens to overcome us, when we feel isolated (because fear is isolating), or want to run to a different universe, then we need to take a breath and step back from the emotion. Instead of hiding it away, we can notice it. Make it something to observe and learn from. Such fear is not a message to run away but to open up.

 

Close your eyes and notice how you are breathing. If you feel powerless, it is not a message about giving up but that you need to act. If you feel lacking in courage or you can’t imagine what to do, then imagine someone you know or have read about or wish to know who acted with courage. Someone compassionate and driven to act, or someone informed who knew and did what needed to be done. Maybe someone creative who thought of something no one else thought of.

 

Who was this person? Imagine her or him. Imagine what she looks like. What was it this person did? What do you think she felt when she did it? Or felt before she did it? Imagine the fear or self-doubt he might have felt? How did he act despite the fear? Imagine her feeling fear yet acting anyway.

 

How is this person just like you? Is her fear any different from yours?

 

Imagine him feeling he had to act. What have you done in your life that was helpful to someone else or creative?

 

You and this person are not so different. You both feel fear. You both breathe in and out. You both notice what is happening.

 

So now let come to mind some situation you want to change, and you feel needs addressing. Let come to mind something you can do. And imagine doing it. Where do you start? Who can you talk to about it? Who would share your concern?

 

And what do you need to know? Where could you find that information? And what would the change look like?

 

What would it feel like to have taken these actions?

 

Take a breath in and out. How do you feel now?

 

To read the whole blog, go to The Good Men Project.

Transformation of Self and World

In a philosophy class I taught a few years ago, the class read sections of the Indian spiritual classic, the Bhagavad Gita. One passage said:

“You have a right to your actions

But never to your actions’ fruits.

Act for the action’s sake.”

I asked my students what this passage meant to them. They had difficulty with it. “Why not be concerned with the fruits of your actions?” they asked.  “You do something well, you deserve praise.” Don’t you want to foster a concern with the fruits of your actions, or at least the ethical consequences of your actions on the world?

 

I asked: What is meant by “the fruits”? Whose fruits are they? Why do you act at all? Why fight against war or racism? Is your action worthy only if you’re successful?  If you center only on whether you are patted on the back or make the headlines or even stop the war, what happens when the task goes on longer than you thought? What happens when you have to face those who disagree with you or even face people you love but who don’t actively support your cause? Maybe you should act because the nature of the act itself, in context, is beautiful, worthy, right?

 

The philosopher and Zen teacher, David Loy, has a new book out called A New Buddhist Path: Enlightenment, Evolution, and Ethics in the Modern World. Loy talks about the “awakened activism” of the bodhisattva. A bodhisattva is someone who has attained much wisdom but gives up nirvana, personal liberation, until the liberation of all is attained. She or he can do this because of a dual practice; the way to personal transformation is aided by “doing everything she can to promote social and ecological transformation.” One acts because the action just needs to be taken and in this way the clarity of one’s perception and understanding improves.

 

Loy aims to apply traditional Buddhism to our modern world and develop “a fresh understanding of our place and role in it.” Our modern scientific and materialist culture, although it has given us many gifts, from improved medicine to global communication, also preaches a distorted way to think of and observe “the world and our place in it.” It is a sense that we, our very selves, are inherently separable from our world, that we can think of our welfare as distinct from its welfare, and thus can think of others or the world as merely resources for us to exploit or fruits to pick. That we can think of our own illumination, our own education, even our own waking up in the morning as separate from the world itself waking up and becoming illuminated.

 

This sense of separation is a psychological and social construction which contains at its heart a sense that something is wrong here, that something is lacking in us and our world, and so we are constantly looking to things like money, power, ideologies, recognition in order to fill that lack. How many times, in discussions of politics or in meetings whose goal is improving some aspect of society, do people get stuck in pushing their own viewpoint, as if they had an exclusive line to truth, as if their truth were separate from everyone else’s? Unless we clearly perceive the root of that sense of something lacking in our self, all that we do will only replicate it. To right any wrongs in the world our actions must arise out of understanding our own essential oneness with “it” or that we were never separate to begin with. We can’t create, for example, a more compassionate world by acting without compassion. Working for environmental, social, educational justice is inseparable from and needs to include working on one’s own mind, awareness, understanding and ethical nature.

 

Loy gives us a great gift, a marvelous guide to deconstructing our ways of thinking of and perceiving the world. Maybe the lessons of this book and Catastrophism, which I wrote about last week, can be synthesized. Deep social change requires deep organizing, thinking and communicating. When social action is perceived and felt as personal as well as political transformation, it is easier to face what is difficult. If actions are contemplated with empathy and compassion, more people will join in, thinking will be clearer and more creative. You and your world will awaken together.

Retirement: What Does It and Can It Mean?

What does it mean to retire besides leaving your job? As soon as I thought of this as a topic, I received two related e-mails, which confirmed for me how important the topic is.  One was about the book The Age of Dignity, on the great numbers of baby boomers reaching retirement and how to care for so many people. The other was an article about how poor our health care system is in terms of caring for dying people. I’m, however, primarily interested now in what retirement means to the retiree and to society. What do you do when you retire? How do you think of yourself once you’re a “senior citizen”? How can society in general think of this stage of life?

 

Of course, I have a personal interest in the question.  I’m 67, close to 68. When I retired, the obvious stared me clearly in the face. Work had filled my life for years, not just my time but my sense of myself. I found status, friendship, purpose, value through the job. I was a teacher and felt gifted to be paid to creatively help other people. I had a plan, too. When I retired, I would do things that I didn’t allow myself to do when working. I would also do what I wanted to do since I was 6 or 8 or 18, namely write. Of course, when I was 6, I wanted to write about great adventures. Now, I’m writing about retiring, teaching, thinking– a very different kind of adventure. Earlier in my life, I needed to make a good deal of money if I wanted to write. Now, I don’t have to do that. I’m free from that demand.

 

But I still ask myself: I have hopefully 20-plus years of life left. How do I want to live it?

 

Huston Smith describes two stages of life beyond work in traditional forms of Hinduism, beyond what he calls the “householder stage.” There is the retiree stage and then the sannyasin. He says not everyone reaches either of them. The retirement stage is where one turns inwards to answer life’s deepest questions. You leave home, even your spouse and family, and become a “forest dweller” or a wanderer. You give up all your ties and live with “nothing” between you and reality. Your life is driven by questions: what makes life worthwhile? Is old age worthwhile? Is self-understanding truly important? What is the secret of ‘I’? This is a time of transcending the five senses “to dwell in the reality which underlies the natural world.” (53)

 

A sannyasin is a renunciate, “one who neither hates nor loves,” according to the Bhagavad Gita, one of the sacred books of India. A sannyasin has found self-realization and can return to the world, because everywhere is home, everything is enlightening.

 

I remember a discussion that was repeated several times and in different ways with my students. The question was “would you rather live with a comfortable illusion or a discomforting truth?” Or, “Is it right to bury your head in the sand in order to not be overwhelmed by fear or others suffering?” It’s a false dichotomy, but reveals real questions. Why should I live with no illusions between “reality” and myself? Should my life be guided by what’s comfortable? How much “truth” can I let in? How honest can I be with myself?

 

I have no desire to leave home, give up my wife, or cats but, in some sense, have I already done so? By giving up my job, I gave up a busy but scheduled, seemingly predictable life, a life centered on doing and earning. Sometimes, retiring seems like an extended vacation, other times, like a curse. What do you do when you have no work, no set of obligations to take up most of the day?

 

I retired when I did partly because I wanted to answer these questions before I died. Despite what I had told myself, what I did had value partly because other people valued what I did and paid for it. In the U. S., money concerns tend to creep in everywhere. Wasn’t it about time to care enough about life that I no longer needed to be paid to live it? Can I give each moment the same value I once gave to work? Can I open enough to the world, to others, and value them, feel them, so deeply that I gain security not in material things and other’s opinion of me, but in relationship to others and in a sense of what’s right, what “fits the situation,” what is?

 

All of society could benefit from re-conceptualizing retirement, not just as a reward for years of hard work, but also as important in-itself. We need times in life dedicated to questioning. We need elders to teach us about life and aging. We will (hopefully) all retire and get old. We can’t just bury our heads in the sands of youth. If we don’t think positively of elders, then we will fear aging and thus our lives. We might treat the elderly with disrespect and have years of disrespect waiting for us. How we think of elders is very much how we think about life itself.

 

My grandfather told me that he regretted nothing. He had lived a full life. Only by valuing the moments of life can you say this. This is one reason not to bury your head in the sand in the face of discomfort or the face of others suffering or whatever. Burials are expensive. You pay a price for hiding. The world pays a price for your hiding. Both you and the world are poorer for it. Maybe learning how to be rich in this way is what retirement is for.