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Podcast 2020
| 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. | |
| In a recent email to Retirement Talk, John from McLean, Virginia wondered if I could talk a bit about Tai Chi. He exercises regularly, is close to retirement age and feels a bit tense at his work. He wanted to know if I thought Tai Chi might be worked into a routine that might help him. | |
| Over ten years have now passed since talking with my friend concerning his move to downsize. He seems to be fairly content with his decision. He moved to the place that offered more space for his work as a guitar luthier. He did not go for location above all else. | |
| Retirement gives us time to think things over. Maybe the existentialists had it wrong. The real life of the absurd would be if we were to live forever. The older I get the more I think so. | |
| What’s a person to do? Move? Leave the community that you know and follow your children across the country? Or, perhaps encourage your children to move back to your community. That doesn’t seem like a very wise nor fair thing to do. | |
| We have now been vegetarians for ten years. We have deviated into the pescetarian world. We added fish. Becoming vegetarian or pescetarian opened a lot of doors for us. I can't imagine falling back in the habit of eating dead animals. | |
| The Social Security dilemma, climate change and health care are going to demand change; big change. Now may be a good time to let your imagination run wild. | |
| Here is a project for retired people. Our knowledge of history seems to be needed now more than ever. Maybe I'll have to have more conversation with my grandchildren. I know my children are set. | |
| There is a lesson here for all of us whether we are retired or not. Risk taking is where life rises to its highest level; when we are challenged and step forward; when we throw ourselves into the present moment and risk failure and tempt success. This is when we overcome ourselves. | |
| The best part of producing 700 podcasts has been being engaged in the process. It has been a force to include sitting quietly and thinking about life on a regular basis. What have I been doing? What have I been thinking? | |
| "Picking a fight" is not something our parents told us was a good thing to do. Perhaps we need to rethink this advice. Retirement might be the perfect time to look around and pick a fight. | |
| Retirement allows us time to expand our horizons. New experiences may be closer than we think. You might want to sit in on a trial or two in your own home town. It might prove to be more interesting than the trial on television. | |
| How do you fill your days in retirement? Now that we are retired, we have lots of choices of new and different ways to spend our time. Are you feeling good about those choices, or are you seeking new ideas? | |
| Life makes severe demands for many years on our time and energy. We are consumed with providing for our very existence; ours and our children's. We somehow work through providing answers to questions and daily demands. Then we retire. Then different questions require attention. | |
| I like to think I followed this advice. But as soon as I say that I know that I do that only some of the time. I like to think that I choose and then go with it. But that is one of those little truisms or sayings that can get you in trouble. | |
| I am not advocating disregard of problems in the world but I am suggesting the need to be a bit selective in those we want to assume. It seems like there should be a time when we may choose to retire from more than work. | |
| When I was seven, I wanted to be an author. No doubt about it. Fireman? Test pilot? Those careers had moments of interest, but never rose to more than a second choice. | |
| Retirement makes new demands. It takes some adjusting and thinking. Knowing ourselves, imagining and creating ourselves. Not so easy. No wonder people prefer golf, books and television. | |
| Retirement gives us time to pause with poets both living and dead. We could do worse than spend some time with poetry. | |
| As most of us know, especially if you're of retirement age, is how the unexpected can come at any time and in any form. Going from driving in an RV for an extend visit with family to ending up in a hospital bed being prepped for surgery in less than 10 hours. | |
| There are many ways around the mountain. I guess it is up to each of us to find our own route. We know that without good health life itself disappears. That tells us how important it is when we consider what we are doing with our life on a daily basis. It is always best to put health in first position. | |
| What is the key to keeping healthy in life? There are about as many theories as there are people. The older I get the less attention I pay to all of these "secrets to a long life". What I like are ideas that fit in with what I am already doing. | |
| It is past time that I try to think a bit more critical about Covid-19 and how it affects retirement. We all feel the pressure and changes in our lives. There are people who refuse to accept the reality of the situation. They refuse the statistics and the science. The rest of us have to deal with the tragedy as it is. | |
| When the talk is all one way it ceases to be conversation. It is more of a lecture. It is this one-way street that discourages honest conversation. Retirement gives us time to think about what we are doing. We can learn to listen as well as talk whenever we get a chance. | |
| Imagination plays a major role in what one does with their retirement years. We don't have much to guide us. Today's retired people get to be explorers. We venture into new territory. | |
| Trying something new can be a real treat for retired people. It just takes getting up off of the couch and walking out the door. Sometimes that isn't as easy as it sounds but it can certainly add a new dimension to the retirement experience. | |
| How does one reason with someone who doesn't believe in reason? I wish I had the answer to that question. We retired people have lived through a sea-change in acceptable methods of thinking. | |
| It isn't easy this ‘enjoying of the moment’. Life has prepared us to plan ahead. Make preparations. We concern ourselves with what may happen. The ability and inclination to enjoy the moment is drummed out of us at a very early age. | |
| These three episodes are only intended to provoke a little thought about what you may be doing and some other possibilities. They have worked for us. They might work for you. I still think the key to successful financing of retirement is to spend less than you take in. And be lucky. | |
| Since we have been retired for thirty three years and never felt the need for taking another job we must have been doing something right. Certainly, luck played the biggest role. We all need that. But here are some of the factors we could control that we used. | |
| Financial advice is not my specialty. We have been lucky. That is my best advice: be lucky. We did get some financial advice long ago that has served us well in retirement. It served us well before and after retirement. Here is the story. It might help you. | |
| It is hard to make an argument that the idea of alleviating painful suffering that many times precede death is wrong. It is your life. Shouldn't that be your decision? Your neighbors, your relatives, your friends and your government can just butt out. | |
| Retirement forces us into another world. We don’t have that workplace connection. We have to look elsewhere for friends. We just need to remember that developing friends require a little effort. We have to get up and get out. | |
| Focusing on what we can control takes some effort. It may not be easy but it is certainly worth the effort.Retirement offers us time to pursue whatever we wish but sometimes our space and time gets invaded. We have to withstand invasion on a daily basis. Focusing on our own wishes requires constant effort. | |
| "Learning makes life more interesting". Community college can be invaluable. No test, no grades, no attendance taken, and low cost; seems like a source that most retired people would find very appealing. It also allows us a place to meet people within our community - that's a bonus. | |
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We don't retire with the hope that the neighborhood turns into a ghetto. It feels good to walk down a street that is clean; that is filled with people who are busy shopping, walking, sitting in coffee shops or lingering over a glass of wine. |
| There seems to be a real advantage in simplifying one’s life as one gets older. I’m not sure it comes with age just because we are older or if, indeed, it comes with wisdom that takes us a long time to acquire. Maybe it would be just as advantageous to simplify life at an earlier age but we just don’t know enough to do it. | |
| When I took my first lesson in Tai Chi I swore that if it didn’t really help me that my first day would be my last day. Now it must be well over ten thousand days since that first day. Tai Chi remains a daily practice. | |
| Dogs and people seem to make a perfect match – especially dogs and older people. They are friends, they are company, they're family. There is something about being assured of unconditional love on a daily basis that is hard to refuse. A dog could be a great boon to retirement or any form of social isolation. | |
| Today, more than ever, one needs to take control of one’s news intake. We need to be informed but not overwhelmed thinking about alarms, alarm clocks, and the news. I don’t mean to pontificate – I just mean to rant. There is more to life than today's news. | |
| We wanted a temperate climate – not hot and not cold. We wanted a university in the town and we wanted it on the west coast, close to mountains and salt water, close to a big city (Seattle and Vancouver in this case), not so small that we would know everyone and not so big that we couldn’t feel like part of the community. | |
| My wife is starting to hesitate longer and longer between suggesting trips. It just doesn’t seem like it is worth it anymore. She knows there will be resistance. We don’t want to admit that for us the time for exotic travel may be a thing of the past. | |
| What is to be said for sitting down, enjoying life’s moments, breathing deeply, walking the beach or just rocking back in forth in the old chair that sits on the porch. What is to be said for those that truly do wish to “let go” | |
| “What are you doing with retirement?” a friend of mine asked. I never know how to respond. Easy to answer that question when one has a job: “I’m still teaching. I’m still doing law. I’m still farming.” It trips right off the tongue and the conversation can move on. Not so when it comes to explaining what one does in retirement. | |
| Retirement is like that. Life is like that. It isn’t that you grow Dahlias, write the great American novel or build a better boat. The questions to answer are: Does it work for you? Are you committed? Do you understand what you are doing with your life and why? | |
| Giving meaning to life is important for all of us. We need to feel that we have something for which life is worth living. If ancient religion doesn’t provide it then something else must. | |
| Retirement offers lots of possibilities and working with our hands seems to be a favorite of a lot of us that use to do mind work. It isn’t for everyone but it certainly has its fans. | |
| This episode first ran 10 years ago. That is how long ago we converted. And that is how long our change in eating has remained. With only minor exceptions have we strayed from the path. You may find the process and the results interesting if not compelling. A few changes and updates have been added. | |
| Peter spent a great deal of time worried about death that ultimately came in a most serene way. The doctor probably had it right in that we are most assured of missing the prediction of how any of us might die. |
There is much to be gained by going slow. Retirement gives us time to breath, time to letup, time to sit in quiet repose. We should know by now that we aren’t really going anywhere. We may as well take our time. |
| Retirement affords us a special time in life when we can pick and choose how we spend our time. Television and movie production and consumption has changed so much in recent years. It affords a wonderful view into modern artistic efforts. One could do worse than sitting down in front of the screen. |
| I would certainly like to leave my grandchildren a world in which dependence on science is not denigrated or destroyed. Denying the truth, or facts, isn’t good for young kids or older folks. |
| Every time I look down the road to see where I'm going I see all of these other roads that diverge and dip into the undergrowth to reveal what I will never see. And I wonder about those. |
| This episode is an updated version of a podcast I ran about 10 years ago. I think it still has value and is worth repeating - at least once a year. Keep in mind: we all have to find our own way. This may serve as just one example. |
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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