August 2003
Retiring Well
Featured Writer: R. Cotton Fite, Ph.D. Licensed Clinical Psychologist

Having only recently passed the magical mark of 65, I am still adjusting to the experience of becoming a “senior” and the phase of life I am entering, sometimes called retirement. What is already clear about my new status as a senior citizen is that there are some distinct advantages. There are token financial goodies for seniors. Movie theatres let me in for what I consider a reasonable price and my local fitness center has reduced the cost of my annual membership. On the other hand, my physician told me that as a senior citizen I now need a pneumonia shot every eight years — to which I quickly took offense. To add to the insult, friends feel strangely compelled to tell me I really don’t look my age which means I probably do.

What most intrigues me about this transition, more than the obvious markers of getting a Medicare card and my first Social Security check, are the subtle changes and challenges that I suspect derail many new retirees. Without some care on my part, I’m sure they could derail me as well. So in order to “stay on track” as successfully as possible, I made it a point to interview older friends whom I admire and who seem to be living rich and full lives. How do they do it? What gives them the most pleasure? Where are the hard spots? Here is some of what I have learned from friends so far, together with insights I am gathering as I make the journey.

The first thing I learned is that the word retirement is no longer particularly useful. It suggests a leaving or a removing oneself from life and, while retirees may leave a particular job or reduce the hours they work, few like to think of themselves as opting out. More accurately, it is a transition to a new phase of life, which, like other phases, has its benefits and challenges. The people I talked with were active, interested and productive in ways that not only enriched themselves but benefited their communities as well. They frequently complained about not having enough time.

A challenge for many in the early phases was in giving up the easy answer to the question “So what do you do?” What we do for a living can easily pass for who we are. Whether we leave a position at 60, 65 or 70, we lose the subtle status that goes with telling others what we “do”. Who we are is a different and more important question and takes longer to disclose. Some who leave employment positions that provided a sense of self-importance may experience depression, whose depth and duration will depend on how much they relied upon that status for their identity. Talking this through with a spouse, close friend or with a counselor is usually sufficient to restore a positive sense of self.

Some I talked with had struggled with the question of moving from the communities they had lived in most of their lives to some more “comfortable” clime. There’s no rule about this, they told me, but their advice was to be careful about uprooting yourself for a retirement paradise somewhere else. Networks of friendships take time to build and are an important source of personal support.

Everyone I talked to encountered an issue that surfaced for me months before my official “retirement” in my relationship with my wife. Because she works at home, the prospect of having me around the house most days gave her considerable unease. That’s a lot more relating than we’re used to, and she was not altogether sure how she would like it. For nearly everyone who lives with a partner there is a significant period of adjustment — of learning how to share space, how to plan enough alone time, enough togetherness, how to reallocate duties. Issues that have been held at bay by the pace of life suddenly resurface, and it takes both courage and candor to face them.

Medical and financial questions are the concern of many senior citizens, and understandably so. Those on fixed incomes and those who have already encountered medical problems may spend much of their hard-earned leisure time worrying. Adjusting to new financial limitations and health concerns calls for competent professional counsel and a level of personal acceptance to the realities of growing older. I am very aware these days of lessened energy and a creakiness in my joints that wasn’t there ten years ago. My wife and I have agreed that we will each get one (and only one) opportunity a day to complain about our maladies and will support each other in maintaining a fitness regime.

Retirees have an enormous opportunity to reassess what is really important in their lives. It’s a time to look candidly at the ways we spend energy, time and money and to ask what brings meaning and what does not. The pressures to do things for appearance lessen, and we may become less attached to old patterns. In many ways retirement may have a distinctly spiritual flavor. Our own death is more real to us and it forces the question — what and whom do I really care about? As a very active person all my life (my family might call it “driven”), I need to learn to savor leisure time and to avoid filling it up with “worthwhile” activities. If my retirement journey is successful, maybe some of the pretenses I have acquired over a lifetime will gradually fall away and my sense of meaning and purpose will grow.

Whatever they are called, our senior years have the potential for deepening and widening our souls and creating more wholeness.

Featured Writer:
Dr. Fite is the Director of The Counseling Center of Lutheran General Hospital. He is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist, an AAPC Diplomate and an Episcopal priest.

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