Retirement or Re-routing?
Copyright 2005 Mary Desaulniers
When I was in my twenties, the idea of retirement seemed a death
sentence. Anxious to establish a place for myself in the
professional world, I found the prospect of unstructured time
terrifying and wasteful.
Now, in my fifties, I find the prospect of retirement seductive,
even compelling--not something to be pushed to the end of one's
life like an afterthought, but something that must be planned
for, actively pursued while there is yet time.
However, when I made the announcement that I would be taking an
early retirement from my teaching profession, I was not prepared
for some of the comments I received. "What will you do with your
time?" "Are you happy?" another colleague asked me six months
into my retirement. "Are you truly happy?"
The question misses the point-- retirement is not so much an
issue of happiness (in the way Freedom 55 ads would like us to
believe) as it is an issue of integrity. The decision to leave
the professional world is just as serious as the decision to
work till one's dying breath. The question "Are you happy?" I
fear, comes from the bias of our highly production-conscious
society. Work is considered legitimate only if it produces
something tangible. And a good life is one that is obviously
productive, defined by traditionally external measures of
success such as schedules, visibility, profit and status. How
can one who opts out of the professional life be happy?
Perhaps an answer can be gleaned from Impressionist Artist
Claude Monet whose life shifted in a somewhat new direction when
he turned 50. At 21, Monet was conscripted into the army. His
father bought him out of military service on the condition that
he received formal art training in Paris. Every fiber in Monet
resisted classical training; what he wanted most was to paint
outdoors. Rejected by the Salon in his early career, he
persisted in painting the way he saw, insisting that his eyes
were all he needed. Refusing to allow theory to eclipse his
sight, he traveled extensively, to the outlying shores of
France, London, Holland, the Mediterranean Coast to capture the
dramatic and exotic in landscapes.
It wasn't until 1890, when his art generated tremendous
enthusiasm in New York that he became financially secure. 1890
was a watershed year. Monet turned 50 and the property at
Giverny which he had leased a few years before, became legally
his own; he was able to purchase it outright for 22,000 francs.
Instead of continuing in the same vein as he had through most of
his life,-- traveling, painting exotic landscapes that were
highly lucrative on the market-- Monet retired to his country
cottage at Giverny and started a flower garden.
What were the reasons for this dramatic change? Financial
security was part of the answer. The other part, I think, had a
great deal to do with Monet's sense of integrity about what he
wanted to do with his life. Released from bread and butter
issues, he could finally pursue a path that he could call his
own. "My garden is slow work, pursued with love and I do not
deny that. What I need most of all are flowers, always, always."
And flowers he grew--a whole feast of them--tulips .lilacs,
marigolds, dahlias, nasturtiums, all arranged with an eye for
color and light.
It was a self-contained world--the paintings mirroring the
garden, the garden mirroring what he perceived to be the
incredible mystery of light and atmosphere. Yet by no means was
it a trivial world; in pursuing what he loved, Monet had entered
what most of us yearn for but deny ourselves because of lack of
time--the deepening of spiritual experience. He had begun to
answer the need that surfaces when our bodies begin their
dissolution (usually around 50)--the need to deepen ourselves,
move down into the earthy layers of our psyche and take root.
This rooting is most evident in Monet's later series of
paintings on grainstacks and water-lilies, paintings that he
replicated laboriously at different times of the day in order to
pursue the subtle nuances of change that accompany perception in
time. These subjects were, from the perspectives of market in
the late 1800's, very limited and compromising because of their
ordinariness. But passionate about this work, Monet delayed
several times to honor requests for more profitable and exotic
pieces he had contracted to various art dealers and journals.
What was his excuse? Working on the grainstacks. Money was no
longer important now, but the integrity of his passion was.
A friend once told me that retirement should be more
appropriately called "re-routing," that is, taking a different
route, a more personal route, a route less traveled but no less
rewarding. It is a re-routing to the unlived life that has been
pushed to the periphery by the demands of livelihood,
parenthood, ambition: the kids need to be fed and you have to
prove yourself to the world. Paying attention to our dreams and
yearnings takes time. Listening to the voice of inner guidance,
working to connect with spirit--all these take time. To a world
consumed by schedules and productivity, re-routing might seem
like wasting time. But it is only within the luxury of time that
roots can grow.