The Retirement of Retirement

And, in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years. ~ Abraham Lincoln

My purpose of this blog always has been to remind baby boomers that we are rewriting the rules with regard to aging and, more specifically, retirement, probably setting a standard that will be followed for many decades. More and more, I'm seeing news articles and book titles about "encore" careers and how the baby boomers are not willing — or, perhaps, financially able — to just step out of the work force onto the golf course. This year, my own personal focus will be on preparing for my second career of being a nutrition counselor, which I'm hoping will become a paying gig eventually. 

When we were young, we were asked, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Our answers were usually based on who our current hero figure happened to be, but they would generally run along the lines of fireman, astronaut, President. Of course, by our teens, we had come to mistrust all authority and wanted to be rock stars, hippies or President. I'm positive I would never have answered with, "I want to be a nutrition counselor." But, through the years, I've discovered interests — and talents, even — in areas that weren't appealing back in my youth. We women fought hard to get out of the kitchen and into the boardroom. Following a career in food preparation and nutrition would have felt like taking a step backward.

Yet, here I am, at an age I previously considered a winding-down period, instead taking on a new challenge of college courses in nutrition. And, luckily for me, the timing couldn't be better in terms of opportunity. The new "plague" of obesity that threatens to lower life expectancy in just one more generation, even with our medical advances, has baby boomer tattooed all over it. How we loved that we could drive right up to a window and purchase an inexpensive family dinner... loved it so much, people stopped cooking! It was great, right up to the point where we are now — overweight, diabetic and dying from heart disease. It's like a line from the old Laurel and Hardy movies, "Well, this is a fine mess we've gotten ourselves into." As a self-respecting, activist child of the 60's, I couldn't simply walk away from that revelation, and I just happen to be in the market for a new career path. Eureka!   

We believed we could change the world and, for better or worse, we did. Now is the time for boomers to look at those changes and determine how to capitalize on what works and fix what doesn't. It's a golden time for entrepreneurship as technology continues to make working from home more efficient than maintaining office space. We all need to brush the cobwebs off that activism spirit that shaped history and find the hero our childhood aspirations once told us we could be. I'm pretty sure there were very few young boomers who answered the question of what they wanted to be when they grew up with, "I want to commute two hours each day to an office without windows and be in a lot of meetings." 

Granted, it's a given the opportunities for becoming firemen or astronauts at our age are highly unlikely... although hippy could still be a viable possibility. But, there are strong signs that the second career opportunities for baby boomers are going to be much more substantial than a lot of folks were expecting. AARP put together a list of second career suggestions, some of which don't even require a degree. Kerry Hannon, a freelance writer for Forbes, has written a couple of books about choosing a new path that can offer the fulfillment you deserve and the compensation you need. In a column, titled "Why You Should Start Your Second Verse Now," she offered some sound suggestions on how to find your passion and inspiration.

"You've got three choices in life: give up, give in or give it all you've got." ~ Unknown

My dad had a cap that had the word "Retired" embroidered over the rim. He wore it everywhere. For him, just being able to retire was a goal. But, his generation survived the Great Depression, non-treatable diseases and two World Wars. Today, retirement shouldn't define who we are; it should be a embarkation platform from one journey to another. Use your retirement to rediscover the adventuresome fearlessness of youth, tap into all the knowledge and experience you've acquired in your maturity and become the hero you dreamed of being all those years ago. We've changed the world throughout our entire lives. Let's not buy into the age-old cycle of "live, work, retire, die"... not when we have this incredible moment in time for creating a new cycle of "dream, learn, become, empower." 

You can't help getting older. But, you don't have to get old. ~ George Burns