Retirement or growing older, gives us the space to see ourselves and how we fit into our lives.
If you are lucky, by the time you retire, you have grown into a self that your soul feels at rest in.
What I am learning, is that there is a sweet spot - where you are not trying to do too much; but are not too lazy either. Yet I love my lazy hours too.
I am into my second month of being retired. I luxuriate on the freedom of time. I do also feel though the anxiety of wasting it, figuring out what to do, or rather how I spend it.
Just as we bank our finances - we make choices on how to spend them.
In retirement there is time; but the time is also our lives being drained.
The minutes and hours are our life, and we have now lived longer than we have to live.
What do I want to spend my time on?
And the time to do what you dreamed of, "when I retire" is now here.
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life.". Mary Oliver.
I feel the preciousness of health and life flowing away.
I feel the anxiety of grasping on to this and then this.
Of making sure what I am doing will matter.
To me.
I am not sure doing art for art sake is for me.
Yet, I love it.
What part of me and my life is about art?
Living life and its purpose, seems to be front and center.
Yet what does living really mean?
More what is now my purpose of life.
Being retired isn't a purpose.
Doing art isn't a purpose on its own either.
Is there an intention of living that is enough.
To live.
Does there have to be an agenda, a meaning or purpose?
Is there a purpose of retirement?
It almost feels like I lived unintentionally my whole life.
Most of it surviving.
Or on someone else's purpose.
As a religious person in my younger years, you lived out the desires of the church and for an afterlife.
In recent years, I lived out the awakening from denial and exploring old beliefs.
The unraveling for sure was a purpose - to be free.
In the freedom years - now - now what?
What experiences do I want to experience?
What parts of life do I now want to explore?
You can get caught up in one day rolling into the next mindlessly and without your instruction or direction.
Coming from co-dependency, it feels like a sin to focus on just me.
To look at my life from my point of view.
Retirement allows you to look at your legacy and see if there are things you still would love to accomplish.
Places and experiences you feel drawn to.
Maybe I want this part of my life have more intention or rather my attention.
It feels like all of the excuses ran out.
There is now no reason not to do what you love to do, not to explore or experience new places and things.
What I also know, is that much of this has been off my radar.
I now need to start looking in the places I have ignored - to see what is out there waiting for me.
I think I thought, it would naturally come to me - I am now understanding, I need to be curious and searching, open to new ideas, and moving into places I have not been before.
Perhaps retirement can be an adventure, if you dare to engage with attention to the world around you.
Retirement can be soul full years. Living life doing what makes your soul sing out loud.
