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Podcast 2021
| Yes, we retire. The parents, teachers, bosses and our own children no longer control us and they no longer give meaning to our lives. We are on our own. Now we must give meaning to our own lives. | |
| Kids fall down and skin their knees. Football players fall down and bounce up - usually. My mother fell down at age 89 and never regained her health. Her fall led to surgery and then the nursing home and then the grave. We need to be a bit more careful about falling as we grow older. | |
| Detail has never been my forte. Not in anything. As a member of the retirement community I find it most challenging and interesting to try to change this age old habit. Old habits become part and parcel of who we are but that doesn't mean that they have to stay. | |
| What brings us happiness is so very relative. If we have just finished eating food we don't like or aren't satisfied we can go crazy over something familiar and filling. If our hands are cold a good pair of gloves can seem like a god send. Happiness is all about improving our condition. | |
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Retirement offers a different challenge for us when looking ahead. We have never been down this road. We have our own little idiosyncrasies that may make our decisions different from anyone else. We need to prepare for an adventure. |
| One thing we all learn as we grow up is that sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. It is the nature of a contest. It is the nature of life. It is a hard lesson to accept. Perhaps some people never learn. Either that or they never grow up. | |
| A fellow colleague used to get up at 5:30 every morning so that she could meditate before work. She claimed it was better than sleep and that she, "Couldn't live without it”. That might not be a bad idea. | |
| What we do with ourselves or with our family or friends when death comes is important to some. I don't think it is important to the ones who die but it is to those that are left behind. We need to be comfortable with the decision. | |
| Do we remember what has happened in our life? Or do we remember just parts of what happened in our life? The parts we like. Or do we remember what we wish had happened? | |
| Some of us make aging difficult by refusing to accept it. It is just as silly as when we are on the other end and irritate people by refusing to "grow up". | |
| Sometimes I think we should start a new political party entitled "We". It would be based on the premise that we should help and care for one another. That we all have rights and responsibilities to everyone else. That would be different. | |
| Retirement has to be one of the more significant milestones we can experience in life. They give us a sense of where we are. They give us something to see, something to point towards or something on which to reflect . | |
| Grit has always been one of my favorite words. It means business; nothing fancy here. But the word has reappeared lately relating to child rearing and educational philosophy. There is no doubt in my mind that grit is needed in all phases of life including retirement. | |
| Good health will end. Life will end. We need to consider that in our decisions about what we are doing with our life on a daily basis. A recent statistical study shows I have about five more years of good health ahead of me. What to do? | |
One of the pleasures of retirement is hearing a voice from the past calling you to re-establish contact. Our work life sometimes reaches out into our retirement life and touches us. It has a way of warming our old heart. |
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| Popular culture focuses on the youth. Life goes through a continuing process of replicating itself. Of course that is good - in a way. But hard to accept when you are the one being discarded. | |
| Neighbors are important and we might all find more comfort in life by engaging those close by rather than spending all of our time reaching across the world via Facebook for friends. We could at least give it a chance. It isn’t an all or nothing choice. There is no reason we can’t have both. | |
| Everyone has stories to tell. Technology makes it possible for all of us to record our stories and share them with grandchildren and others. We love to tell them and we love to hear them. | |
| I always just assumed that most people would be just like me and look at retirement as a gateway into freedom. Freedom to make a life, or create a life of your own choosing. Well, I was wrong. And wrong by a long way. | |
| When it comes to retirement and getting around, the best answer seems to be to choose your location carefully. If you can walk and find anything you might need, or want, the problem of getting around can disappear – along with your car. | |
| Within two days the whole world had turned. She was receiving lots of smiles back. People were laughing and talking with her. She was soon being invited to coffee or lunch. The next 14 years were very exciting and some of the happiest of her life. | |
| Time to slow down and fix something is available to us in retirement. We do not have to rush off, wake to an alarm clock, punch a clock, or get to bed. We do not have to do as we are told or expected. We have time to fix it if we so choose. | |
| What we learned as a teenager, a college student, a mature adult, a parent, and citizen intertwines and forges a strong yet pliable state of mind.We can afford the time to sit back and consider. A retired state of mind emerges that gives us the most comprehensive picture of the world we will ever have. | |
| "The good ol’ days". Did the good ol’ days ever exist? I've heard people talk about them all my life and yet I have never had a desire to revisit any of my old days. | |
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Retirement is a time when a list might be as important as ever. As we enter the latter stages of life our time becomes more important. That is why we have a tendency to slow down. We don't want to rush life. |
| Maybe retirement is the time to become a magician. Or whatever else you dreamed of when you were a child. Or whatever you dream about now that you are retired. | |
| Being retired doesn't mean that vacations are meaningless. They work for us just like they do for others. They recharge our batteries. They bring freshness into our minds and bodies. They help us re-create ourselves. We come back with renewed vision and interest in life. | |
| Most intriguing is this connection between physical exercise and the brain. The common assumption is that exercise benefits the muscles and cardiovascular system. This is true, but the effect exercise has on the emotional and mental aspects of life is rarely discussed. | |
| Annual rituals seem to stay with us throughout life. I know that rituals are good things to have in one's life. They tie us together. They span generations. They remind us of those that have come before. | |
| I can't remember how many times I have forgotten something. It must number in the millions or at least the hundreds of thousands. "Senior Moments" some folks call them. l don't like that label. I've forgotten things all of my life. | |
| Sometimes I think being retired and being a caregiver are synonymous. Perhaps not synonymous but at least closely related. Retirement usually comes to us in our sixties and it is at that same age that our parents are moving into their eighties. At the same time kids or grandkids may be moving in on us. | |
| When the end nears and you ask the question; "Did I live as I wanted?" or "Did I do what I wanted in my retirement years?" it would sure be nice to be able to answer with a firm "yes". | |
| Vision is an amazing thing! There - I've said it. I may keep bumping into things and occasionally fall off my bike but part of my retirement has to include pausing to look around. | |
| Think about what we are doing with our lives. Is it fulfilling or not? Are we doing what we want with our time? Doubt starts circling in the mind and will not stand still. | |
| Shifting gears puts change into action. We move at a different speed. We move in a new direction. We see different things; meet new people. We face new challenges. Life becomes a bit more unpredictable. | |
| "If you take care of your feet your feet will take care of you". Whenever I say that my wife and my grandchildren roll their eyes. I usually don't say it around anyone else. Feet are something we do not talk about. | |
| Today we face global warming, energy production and distribution issues, inequitable distribution of wealth and services, water shortages, terrorism and the ever present issue of pandemics. In retirement we want to continue to help shape the world but we also find it important to sit a while in the sun or the shade and enjoy the moment. | |
| Retirement offers us a chance to reignite the imagination concerning what we can do with our life. We are no longer young and we cannot aspire to some things that require a youthful body. But other than that we are free to explore to our hearts delight. | |
| Retirement affords us a special time in life when we can pick and choose how we spend our time. One could do worse than making movies or videos a big part of retirement. | |
| "Give life a little poke", Steve Jobs said something like that. He went on, "Everything around us was created by someone no smarter than you are." Retirement is the perfect time. Poke away. | |
| We had careers that were mental not physical. We worked mostly with our minds. We were teachers. When we retired one of our delights was to build things with our hands. We wanted to be able to see the results of what we did. Household projects have filled this role to a T. | |
| I recently read that after $60,000 per year money does not influence happiness. Lots of money never satisfies. It only encourages making more. It is like an addictive drug. Once accepted as a goal it takes on a life of its own. | |
| No matter what is scheduled; we go to coffee. It is a social hour for us. When we retired and relocated we took into consideration the distance to restaurants, grocery stores, drug stores, book shops and of course, coffee shops. | |
| I don't want to have any regrets. It takes a certain amount of forward thinking to conclude this. It also takes a certain amount of courage to realize it. Maybe the young man in the coffee shop did the math concerning one thousand months. | |
| One of the major advantages of retirement: we can look back over our life and measure our efforts. We may not be able to repair the damage done but we can redirect the remainder of our days with reflection, awareness and effort. | |
| It seems like coach has been accepted as the proper term to apply to most any instructor. Personal coaches are available to help us guide our own lives wherever they might be or wherever we might want them to go. | |
| We don't have to have the biggest house, farm, car or anything else. They may not be the most desirable. As a matter of fact; in many instances small is much better - if not beautiful. | |
| We retired folks have a perfect opportunity to talk to younger people. We have had a life time of experiences and education. We have been down many roads: made good choices and bad. We just need to learn how to tell a good story - | |
| Malcom Gladwell, writer for the New Yorker magazine, recently wrote a book where he suggested that if you do anything for 10 thousand hours you can be successful at it. I'm living proof that there are exceptions. | |
| "Keeping up" with technology certainly has its advantages. It makes life more interesting. It allows us to communicate in ways we can hardly imagine. It keeps doors and windows open. It ties families and friends together as past generations could have never envisioned. | |
| A listener to these podcasts wrote recently and ask that I address the issue of losing friends, both younger and older. Grief is not a topic to which I lay any claim to being and expert. But like most of us who are retired we have had to deal with it at various times in our life. | |
| It is the end of the year, the year 2020. What a year it has been. What are we retired folks talking about? Well, we talk about the passing year more than we ever have in our lives. |
A resource from a listener: Best Free Online Degrees for Seniors guide is designed to assist seniors who aspire to enhance their intellect or consider starting a new career path. It features an overview of the top online degrees for seniors, emphasizing their numerous advantages, and a broad range of subjects to choose from. A friend's website: Terra Firma Designs: Fine Furniture, Stained Glass and woodworking workshops. Copyright 2010 RetirementTalk.org |
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