What I officially did
was cease writing reflections and blogs. That was my own choice. I simply
wanted to see what retirement is supposed to be like. Then, again, the wife of
one of my colleagues who received my reflections wrote to me thanking me and
then added, “Enjoy your free time.” Note: she did not say, “Enjoy your retirement.”
She knew better. Her husband retired three times and, since she wrote those
words, he has taken another part-time position.
Retirement,
I am coming to learn, means simply using your time in another way and not just
sitting back and doing nothing or even doing less. Arlena and I are both
retired but our days are filled so much so that we wonder how we could have worked
– meaning gotten paid – and still found time to do what we are now doing. The
big difference is that there is no pressure on us to do what we are doing or
not do what we do not feel like doing at that moment in time.
Retirement allows me,
allows anyone who is retired, to take the time to look back on our lives and
ask some simple questions. Mitch Albom in his wonderful little book The Time Keeper has Father Time asking, “You
marked the minutes….But did you use them wisely? To be still? To Cherish? To be
grateful? To lift and to be lifted?”
Serious questions, are
they not? But they are questions we need ask ourselves no matter where we are
in life and not just in retirement. Each of us has only so much time to live on
this earth and none of us knows how much time that is. Thus, the questions
Father Time asks are not just end-of-life questions but during-life questions
as well. Actually, they are more important while we still have life than when
we are on our deathbeds.
Am I using my time right
here and now wisely? Am I making the best use of it, not simply meaning that I
have to fill every minute with activity? Am I taking time to be still, to be
still and, as the Psalmist asks, “to know God”? Taking time to just be still,
to relax?
To cherish what I so
often take for granted: health, life, family, friends? Am I taking time to
cherish the life that has been given be, to be grateful for the blessing that I
have been given but in no way really deserve? To lift others who are overwhelmed by life
just as I have been, at times, overwhelmed and been lifted by those who love
me?
For me one of the true
blessings of retirement is that I have been given the gift to actually retire
even if it might simply mean “free time” before the next time God, through the
Bishop or someone else, calls on me to use the gifts with which I have been
blessed and which and where God deems them to be needed. In the meantime, it’s
time to reflect on how wisely, or not, I am using my time. And you?
