What is retirement?

What is retirement?

Keeping a diary

As we grow and age in this life, we seem to have generalized goals for specific time periods. The first 18 to 25 years can be reserved for education and training. 25-35 could be called the period when one marries and raises some children. 35 to 55 or 65 is where you focus on your job or career. And then you reach the age of “retirement”. What really is “retirement”? Of course, ideally, it means that you can finally stop working and simply “enjoy” your life with your spouse. Your children are adults and they are alone and you no longer have to go to “work” every day.

But what “is” retirement? All the previous sections of a life are full of detailed descriptions. But “retirement” is somehow left quite vague. You would think that retirement would be the long-awaited GOAL of life. But instead we are left with the vague image of a rather large man playing golf and drinking “at the club” and the woman enjoying raising her grandchildren. But what if you’re not a golfer (or drinker) and your grandchildren don’t really need you to raise them? Hmm.

Actually, there is a specific purpose to be achieved within the period called “retirement.” But it is not generally discussed in the media because it has to do with “Spirit”. The period that we call retirement is actually the period in which one must review the entire experience of his life. What have you really learned from your more than 65 years of life within this three-dimensional hologram called life on earth? What have “Mary” or “Jim” really learned in this lifetime? How have you been able to grow your soul?

And this brings me to the main topic: keeping a journal. It really doesn’t take long and you don’t have to be a talented writer. You just have to keep some kind of notes about your life experience as it is happening. And here’s an interesting thing that I’ve discovered (having kept a journal for over 50 years). Among all my notes detailing specific stress patterns and complaint lists, I have noticed that every now and then a detailed “paragraph” or two appears on the page that really has nothing to do with what came before or after. Suddenly, a kind of deep “perception” will appear. And then just as quickly it will stop and the notations will revert to my general complaint patterns detailing my frustrations with one thing and another. And then a week later, maybe a couple of months later, the sudden appearance of another “deep” perception will reappear. It can be just a paragraph or two or it can be a full page. And, rereading my journals, I find that this seems to happen on a semi-regular basis, although at the time of writing I am relatively unaware of “perceptions.”

And here’s the pretty amazing part. I went through my journals with a yellow marker and noted where and when these isolated “perceptions” appear. And then I find out that they are all connected! It looks like a vase that has been shattered a long time ago with the pieces scattered over time. However, in another way of looking at it, it’s like “I” am keeping two diaries. One is my current personal list of frustration and complaints from day to day and the other is from a higher perspective. But the “higher” perspective is still “me.” It is just my point of view from a higher frequency of Mind. Some might call this a gift. Some others might call it heavenly schizophrenia. But it is not uncommon. We all have multiple conversations with “ourselves” all the time. But we are often too distracted by the ongoing drama of life to pay attention.

Now, for many people, a diary is simply a “masculine” euphemism for a “diary.” And as we know, many girls keep a journal while in middle or high school. But likewise, most early nautical explorers kept diaries, except that they were called the ship’s log and detailed their adventure and served as a historical document. I suggest you consider yourself a pioneering explorer on a dangerous mission that has never been attempted before: the personal exploration of your life! Think of your journal as your ship’s journal.

I would also suggest that, in the event that the journal “catches up,” sometime in the future, these journals will be studied in universities around the world as historical documents. “What was life really like in the 21st century”.

But who has the time to press pen to paper in this world of constant distraction and immediate gratification? Well … not necessary. If you own a computer or smartphone, you can simply install a speech-to-text program or application and suddenly you will have a personal secretary to write down all the relevant thoughts and your secretary will work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for free!

That is what I call “retirement.”

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Here is a list of five specific suggestions for readers who have not kept a journal but are now in the “retirement phase” of their life:

1. Write down all the addresses you have ever lived in. Describe each location in detail as best you can remember.

2. List all the “forks” in the road of your life. These don’t have to be particularly good or bad, they are simply positional points where a decision was made that changed everything that came after.

3. List all the “close calls” you have had with the death. Everybody has these “events” that happen in their life that could easily have resulted in their disappearance, but they didn’t. Call it “destiny” or just good luck. Describe each of these in detail.

4. Describe your life in 5-year increments. Start at the age of 5. What do you remember (if you remember anything) between your birth and the age of 5? Then go ahead and remember what you can between the ages of 5 and 10. Do not enter 11 or 12 years. firmly in 5-year increments. And do this until you are within 5 years of your current age.

5. Create a “Reverse Bucket List”. A “normal” wish list would be a list of things you want to do in the future. In the case of a reverse wish list, review your life and select the things that you have already done or accomplished. Things you enjoyed or are proud of and list them “as if” you haven’t really done them yet, but list them as things you want or hope to do or achieve at some point in your life.