You and I Are Too Old To Buy the Retirement Bullsh*t Story

Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society

Photo by Anukrati Omar on Unsplash

Do you honestly believe it’s all relaxation and mai-tais? Think again. It’s a death trap for too many

We don't stop having fun when we get old. We get old when we stop having fun.- Bertrand Russell

In August of 2017 I was in Central Florida for a high school reunion. I’m not sure what idiot came up with that idea; those of us born and raised there know better than to be in Central Florida during the dog days of summer.

Lots of people choose to retire in Florida; I was born there in 1953 and used the Army to get out. I can appreciate the state two months out of the year, and even then only for brief stints to see distant cousins and perhaps enjoy what’s left of Sanibel Island.

The idea of Florida sells to folks who believe the ads and honestly embrace the idea that retirement is perpetual paradise.

After having attended the reunion’s opening night, I was heading back to my hotel when I caught a story on the BBC about Charles Eugster, who at that point had made headlines as an uber-fit 95-year-old man. He hadn’t picked up weights until he reached 87. There was no stopping him after that.

Eugster had lots to say about retirement. I was 64 at the time, and knew that for a number of reasons that retirement wasn’t an option. First, I had no interest in stopping work; second, I sure couldn’t afford it.

Third, it’s unhealthy as hell.

In this BBC story, Eugster said,

"I'm not chasing youthfulness. I'm chasing health. People have been brainwashed to think that after you're 65, you're finished. But retirement is a financial disaster and a health catastrophe," he says.

and

"People seem to forget how old we are becoming," Charles Eugster says. "How on earth do you think we are going to pay for all those years of doing nothing?"

and finally,

As his age group grows in number, he wants better services for them, things like dating agencies, business schools and training facilities for the over 65s - anything that helps the elderly remain engaged and productive which in turn, he believes, keeps them healthier.

And on that last point, he reckons vanity is your best friend.

"Even at 87, I wanted an Adonis body, in order to turn the heads of the sexy, young 70-year-old girls on the beach," he says.

"I wanted a six-pack, but my coach said that we must first work on my bottom, which she said was a catastrophe." (author bolded)

I was impressed with what Eugster had achieved athletically, which is likely out of reach for most of us. We most assuredly don’t need to rewrite the record books as oldsters, although if you do, please contact

Geezer Jock newsletter

with your story.

Ray Glier will be happy to get the word out to all our fellow geezers as inspiration.

More importantly, though, is what Eugster said about retirement.

"We must do everything in our power to see that older people are healthy and productive because if we don't do that we are facing enormous problems between pension liabilities and our health costs,'' he said. "We should have retraining facilities for older people. You are throwing away the skills and expertise of people at 65, and that is absolutely ridiculous.”

It’s a terrible idea to assume that at 65 we can just stop working and relax for another thirty years while our bodies weaken, thicken and deteriorate. That is no kind of way to spend our final years.

Eugster’s comments dug into my brain like a wormhole. It wasn’t just that I agreed with him about the physical training. At 64 in 2017 I was in the best shape of my life. This is my 45th high school reunion photo:

While Covid and foot surgery have since gifted me with a few extra pounds, like Eugster, I’m more interested in the combination of strength and endurance and agility. I have adventures to do, to write about, because I’m determined to motivate more of us to stay active after sixty.

That’s my work. I love my work. Being physically fit is part of my work.

I’m less worried about looking younger than whether or not my body, brain and brawn can carry me well into very late old age with the kind of vivacity enjoyed by this man:

Wang Deshun is playing hard at working. Let’s talk about that piece of it because that’s what really underpins this whole discussion.

At 71, not only is retirement not an option for me financially, but I can’t even imagine not working. Part of that is because writing is who I am, not a job. Adventure travel is who I am, not a job.

Part of this is that ingrained Calvinist idea that I’m not worthy unless I’m working. Let’s table the unhealthy part of that and investigate how good work, truly good work, is part of a good life until the end of life.

At some level most of us likely feel a compulsion to be of service. That’s also ingrained in our humanity and our emotional being. That is where “good work” comes into play. While we’re at it, let’s wrap the word play into the discussion as well.

Photo by Surface on Unsplash

So many of us want to retire because we are tired of work’s drudgery. It isn’t fun, it’s something we suffer so that we can reap our reward: the idea of retirement. Not likely the reality, but the idea of it.

Retirement isn’t what we believe it is, for a thousand reasons. This article speaks to the potential effects on our aging brains when we come to a screeching halt to “rest.” Funny thing, we instantly start to go downhill.

From that piece:

Andel’s suggestion to anyone contemplating retirement: “Find a new routine that’s meaningful.” He points to people living in the Blue Zones, regions of the world that have been identified to be home to a greater number of residents who’ve reached the age of 100 and beyond. One of the common characteristics among Blue Zone inhabitants is, says Andel, “these people all have purpose.”

While a good bit of the Blue Zones work around diet is faulty and now debunked, this part is solid.

So many of us hate the work we do so much that we obsess about the idea of NEVER DOING THAT AGAIN. However, shortly after we do indeed screech to a halt, everything about us screams WHAT’S NEXT? I’M BORED!

How much of yourself will you leave behind when you quit working?

Many of us identify with our work so deeply that virtually the moment we walk out the door we lose who we are. There has never been enough play, enough life outside work to allow us to experience anything but.

Steve Lopez quotes David Bowie in his book Independence Day,

“As you get older, you become the person you always should have been.”

Bowie didn’t live long enough to realize how wrong this is. There is no should. As long as we’re alive, we’re evolving into our next iteration. There is no final destination of being, any more than retirement is an end game. For too many it’s a holding pattern until they expire.

Or, they die so swiftly after leaving work than they never discover any other way of being.

My buddy Paul, now in his sixties and a retired HVAC union guy, spoke longingly about retirement for years. Now retired, he’s bored to tears and desperate for something to keep his lively mind engaged. He lifts weights, which keeps him healthy, but he is hungry to be useful.

Granddad work isn’t enough. He needs a job.

Did I say stay in your career forever? Nope. Besides, as many have found, a hatefully ageist business community boots lots of folks out right when they have reached their finest years in terms of having plenty to offer. They were still loving it, but age-hating American society doesn’t have time (or dime) for them.

That’s another article: this is about us, where we are right now, engaging in magical thinking about retirement.

Photo by Simon Hurry on Unsplash

If you’re at early to mid-life, let’s talk, shall we? This morning I came across this video which addresses how childhood trauma can cause us to work so hard at life to justify our existence (and you thought you were the only one?) can cost us a life.

In it Dr. Gabor Mate, renowned doctor and author on childhood trauma, speaks to his own life choices, and what he would do differently if given a do-over. Worth a listen BEFORE you hit my age and realize, shoot, shoulda coulda woulda.

We need to play more NOW. Why on earth are we working ourselves to death only to reach “retirement” in bodies so badly worn out and broken that all we can muster is to sit and watch other people live?

Ahhh, retirement. Finally, we can be in the Enchanted Forest, and play with Pooh.

We are already living in The Enchanted Forest. We always have lived in the Enchanted Forest. We’ve just been bulldozing, paving, mining, wiping it out until there’s hardly any enchantment left.

Including Pooh, Tigger, Eeyore, Kanga, Roo, Piglet, Owl and Rabbit.

We often engage in work that doesn’t serve our souls. That kind of mindless, horrible work is doing us damage. Of COURSE we want to find some place where we can Just. PLAY.

The work we choose, if it’s soulless, or if it hurts us, or whatever description you like, can make us think magically about retirement. Someday I’ll play, right?

Skipping play, which is self-love, isn’t about being lazy. It’s about preventing you and me from becoming a statistic. Don’t believe me? Please read this from Forbes.

We could do that now, you know. We don’t have to justify our existence with those brutal Calvinist values. If we have the option, and not all do, to be fair, perhaps it’s time we re-think our relationship with work.

Let’s not hold that Magic Kingdom version of retirement in our minds as the be-all end-all that it most assuredly is not.

You and I are WAY Too Old to believe that work is life and life is work. We need play; play is life and life is play, because…joy.

Joy allows us the relief from life’s inevitable pains, grief and vicissitudes.

You and I can play more NOW. You simply choose to make it a priority.

The way I see it, if I don’t have time to play, I don’t have time for life.

Still thinking about retirement? If you want an excellent guide book, look no further than Steve Lopez’ Independence Day: What I Learned About Retirement from Some Who’ve Done It and Some Who Never Will.

See this article if you want a précis. Whatever you do, if you’re on the cliff and completely convinced that decades of do-nothing are heaven, fair warning. Not a good idea.

The real question is what do you think that retirement will give you? If it’s rest, take time off. Play more, then, how about this?

Push back against the productivity hustle nonsense. The only people gaining from that are the folks buying their 32nd yacht at the expense of your quality of life.

If you work yourself to death, forfeit your body, brain power and mental acuity along the way, you set yourself up for elder scams, too.

The idea of retirement is a scam; first to get you to get out of the workforce when you start costing too much. Second: your life, if you are going to live, demands that you clock in play time. You determine what that looks like.

If your work is your play, and mine is, lucky us. Took me until I was sixty to figure that out.

If not, it’s time to claw back more time for you, your family, your kids, your brain, your body, your life already. Work will only rip away what you are willing to give it; if you set boundaries and guardrails to protect yourself from corporate greed and time sucks, life changes. You change. Everything changes.

Yes, there’s a price to pay. I forfeited a $100k+ income. I gained a better life. Fair trade. Sure it’s a scrape. But ninety-hour work weeks?

Again, not everyone has that option, but this isn’t that article.

Nobody is going to hand you or me a hero button for sacrificing our lives on the altar of productivity hustle. Nobody- other than those who love us- gives a damn.

Finally, with so many of us living some thirty years longer, there is no country on earth which has the financial wherewithal to support all those retirees. Especially when so many of us have decades more to offer, and of those millions of Boomers, a great many of us want very much to stay active and give back.

Why don’t some of us pick up Eugster’s ideas and run with them? I’m using my best skills to move the needle. What will the rest of us do with the time we have?

The idea of retirement = paradise is all too often pure hype, followed by real grief. Better to think about how to make our lives work better right now by inserting more joy, play and pure ridiculous fun into our lives rather than wait for some magical time and place.

The Enchanted Forest is right here, right now. We wake up to it every day, and walk among miracles, asleep.

Please.

Let’s play.

My buddy Pooh, guarding fossilized walrus teeth, my totems for living in my beloved Pacific Northwest

Thank you for playing with these ideas with me today. I hope you got value from the links, and are moved to do something to inject plenty of play into your world right now. If this was useful to you please consider

If you know someone contemplating retirement, please also consider

Either way, thank you for reading.