Retirement: That Step Many Times Loved And At The Same Time Feared

Many years working, many days with a similar routine in which at least eight hours have been devoted to productivity. A productivity for a company, if you have been a salaried employee, or a productivity for you in case you have been self-employed or freelance. You look back and you are aware that the years have passed, you see it in your body but also in your way of thinking. Retirement has arrived.

There are people who have very hard jobs, with which they have never felt satisfied and who have suffered every day as a kind of silent and agonizing torture. They started working on it when I was young, when there was practically no other option. With more years and a settled position, they did have that possibility, but they already felt older and without the necessary energy to start over. They would have loved to be writers or pilots, but they have been the neighborhood hardware store their entire lives.

They do not think that they have had a bad life, because the truth is that they have never experienced hardships like those they saw or intuited in wartime or postwar times. However, in his speech there is always that feeling of nostalgia for the one who, looking back, would have done everything very differently.

On the other side we have those people in love with work who do not want to “die without their boots on. ” The same ironmonger who in the early years would have hit fate with a nut in the eye by locking him up in those four walls of dim light, later thanks to his character and sympathy he ended up being the soul of the neighborhood. A place where you went to shop, but also to talk and listen. Thus, there are those in love with their work and indirectly in love with their work who do not want to hear about it.

Retirement as a place of reflection

The ones that both coincide is that at that age there is a time for reflection. People who retire suddenly have eight hours a day, if any, to do whatever they want with them. A freedom that does not sit well with everyone and in which there are questions that can be nailed like poisoned spears. “If they had given me time before, that I was young, I would have eaten the world, but now at my age, what do I do?”

Thus the shadow of the golden times can appear, a sadness for what has already happened, and it happened very quickly, and it will not be repeated. A sensation that they had had until then like the rays that sneak through the cracks of the window, but to which they had never been exposed with it raised.

Before, when the woman worked at home, retirement had a direct influence on only one of the members of the couple. Now, however, many couples go into retirement together. This is an advantage in the sense that the possibilities for empathy and understanding are much greater. It is no longer the woman who finds that the husband spends more hours at home, now it is the two who have to face the change directly.

This causes a re-design of individual lives to take place, but also in shared life, and not because of the change in one of the lives, but because of the change in both. Before it was easier for women to feel confused and put up a certain resistance under the thought that: “Because my husband’s life changes, mine does not have to change.”

Suddenly she could find a husband who suggested plans to her at all hours when what she wanted was to continue shopping on Saturdays and play cards with her friends after eating and watching the novel. In addition, at night she liked to spend a while alone watching TV and now she did not have that time since her husband chained one movie after another, without the fatigue of work inviting him to sleep.

Retirement as a place to plan

The refuge of these new free hours is often the grandchildren. Parents who have no one to leave them with, grandparents with time and wanting to become infected with their youth, and grandmothers wanting to feed them and be part of their care make the pieces fit together. However, now there are fewer and fewer grandchildren and more older children who are leaving home late. Thus, we have more and more retired people who do not have a second floor of descent and who therefore hardly manage to see that their children are already older.

Thus, as we have previously dropped, retirement is not only a step for the person who takes it, but also for everyone around them. On the other hand, it is not a step that has behavior as the only source of influence, but is associated with a necessary change in mentality, both for him and for the people around the new retiree.

Some ideas for a good retirement

Retirement has a great advantage and it is the availability of time. We have already pointed out that it is the haze that this produces, in different senses, that usually causes the emotional earthquake associated with retirement. Therefore a good management of it will be one of the best guarantees of a good retirement. There are those who say that children are, others who were parents once and who do not want to occupy any part of that role again. The best thing is that each one chooses and have the opportunity to choose.

On the other hand, regarding time, retirement also usually has a positive parallel element, which is that friends, peers, usually retire at the same time. This way they can form a new starting group or plan trips together, so that the intimacy time within the couple does not grow so long and can become overwhelming.

Statistics say that after the holidays there are a large number of divorces. People who live together, but are used to living together little, suddenly spend a few days in which they have to spend 24 hours together. In this way, what is difficult to bear becomes unbearable and the bomb explodes. With retirement something similar can happen: suddenly the hours together multiply without there being a transition time.

Continuing with the activities, it is good that the new programming has some objective. It is good that the person does not lose the feeling that he is productive and useful. We have talked about helping the children with the grandchildren, but you can also volunteer. The important thing, as we have said, is to maintain the feeling of utility.

In any case, the secret of a good retirement lies in the mentality with which each one immerses himself in it. If you want to see reasons to be depressed you can collect them, if you want to see those for joy you can also do it. Thus, we speak of a period in which freedom increases and with it, precisely, we have the opportunity to make great plans for the rest of life.