Archive: Opinions

It was two years ago today that I packed the last of my framed credentials, favorite shelf chatchkies and various 12 Step how-to volumes into a few remaining boxes and said goodbye to my last full time career of chemical dependency counseling. I'd done it for ten years following my eighteen years on radio, and in those ten years I'd supposedly outlasted the average of five years to counselor burnout in the business of dealing with chemical dependency. Five years of inpatient counseling and almost five years of outpatient counseling and I'd stopped counting the number of dead I had known and counseled due to overdoses, suicides.

"What are you going to do?" was the continuous question during the last thirty days of cleaning up paperwork, patient transfer and packing. My stock answer was not really rote, nor was it easy. I just wasn't sure.

I was approaching sixty five, social security retirement was a fair amount, though not something to rely on as a sole source of income, had some retirement money stashed and thought I might spend some time with old people, listening and writing; it was the young ones who had contributed to the burnout, and to be very honest, I really wanted to do nothing for a couple of months while I sorted out my options and kind of smell the roses. Two years now, and I can report that, interestingly, my option list has grown, but so have many of my own personal questions.

We baby boomers have been fond of saying "I'll never retire", but with that cliche we also knew that we haven't saved nearly enough to retire 'comfortably', nor have we fully recognized the incredible importance of planning, not just the financial, but so much more importantly the aspect of contentment, doing what we love, figuring out what we love, recognition of life's values and what to do with our leisure, no matter what age we hang up our virtual boxing gloves (it's been a real struggle, hasn't it, for many years).

I have to admit it has been a serious challenge. Firstly, I must look at myself honestly and realize that I haven't really developed a life that some would describe as 'full'. Yes, I downhill ski, and love it. My reading and study of American history is almost a full time obsession, and spending time with the Love of my life as well as my daughter and granddaughter are real white phosphorous flares of pure joy. But, as many of us know, there is always that gnawing feeling that "there has got to be more".

Perhaps that is a natural, human feeling, but I suspect it also has a genesis in the society which we have built, sustained, and lived within; from the pioneers looking westward to the striving of our parents through the Depression, to the MadMen of the fifties and sixties, and of course our own striving for more toys, more throughout much of our lives. I feel pursued by the feeling that I have an unknown number of days, or years, left on this planet and still get a vague, queasy feeling of being not quite finished...or is it not quite fulfilled? I feel discomfited by a story about Leo Tolstoy, who on his deathbed asked his best friend: "What if I got it all wrong?"

I still put in some part-time hours through a 'temp' agency, and they frequently place me in an industrial setting with a company in Dryden, and I am shocked and saddened by the full timers' feelings that are expressed at lunch time: nowhere jobs, thirteen dollars an hour after working for the company over a decade.

But the worst part, underneath the words, is the sense of knowing that even though they are grateful for the work, they know they are stuck. The treadmill will grind on with these people trying to keep up, keep up, keep up in a noisy, dusty and dangerous job, and this to keep their families fed. They live on the fringes of Tompkins County, out where they can afford it. You won't see them in Starbucks, but if you're at a Dunkin' Donuts at six AM, you might see them getting a fast cup of coffee. Sometimes I am struck speechless at how lucky I have been, even now. Thoreau was quoted as saying "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation", and though I might question the word 'most', it is hard to demean the rest of the quote, for many, many of the people I have met these past two years in the minimum wage world sure seem to find it desperate going.

But I cannot linger there, emotionally, because I still must address my own issue in so-called retirement. It's said that getting old is not for sissies, and many of us have found we use the phrase 'getting old' laughingly, but the laugh rings hollow if we haven't thought about what we would really like to do with less pressure on our time. For, I'm here to tell you, there's usually a lot more time to spend than money, at least for me. So, where's the contentment lie? Because, sincerely, it is contentment I seek, and it's sometimes as elusive as... well, happiness.

There's a church right down the road from me, and they've left their Christmas decorations blinking in the night. I remark upon this because in the middle of those sparkling remnants of the late holiday festivities is a large, three letter word, two feet high, lit in various hues that change rainbow-like: 'JOY' is the word, and every time I see it I think of the Lady of my life who frequently asks me with a smile "What brought you joy today?" And the question frequently pushes me into a deep pondering of my seeking, my intuition: What DID I do to seek joy today? What DID bring me joy today?

And there's the crux, I think, of my search for meaning, and perhaps yours, too. Happiness may be elusive, and fleeting some days... it certainly comes and goes, but opening my heart and brain up to a sense of contentment, looking for nuggets of joy certainly has an ability to fill in the empty gaps of the day when I wonder about my next move in life, or question the existential emptiness which intrudes and sometimes won't go easily away. And I have to consciously look for a simple sense of gratitude.

A simple list of things to be grateful for is at first amazingly difficult. Try it, you may see what I mean. Heck, I can even find gratitude for whoever it was that invented hot water (think about it!). An 'attitude of gratitude' is a phrase well known in twelve step groups, and negativity has not a weapon strong enough to overcome simple gratitude. The Wall Street Journal carried an obituary for a man by the name of Peter Stewart, in Dallas. Never heard of him? He started a drive that created a 'Thanksgiving Square' in a park in Dallas to celebrate gratitude. It has a chapel made of white marble and shaped like a rolled up scroll, topped with a spiral of stained glass; he said that gratitude should be an action, a spur to helping others, not just a feeling.

And, one other thing to be said. A woman I knew who was tragically killed in a farm accident a few years ago left many things on her desk (what will they find on yours?) and her daughter stated at her funeral that on that desk was the written statement: "Travel the world over, and you will never, ever find anyone more deserving of love than yourself".

I struggle with this, but I know it to be true. And I know that to find that joy, that contentment, that happiness, no matter how fleeting, I must open my heart, my eyes, my ears, my mind, to the possibility... seeking it, searching for it, is one thing, but finding it will require me to be open to the infinite possibilities of gratitude, love, and my own and others' human potential. And I'll take my time, in 'retirement', to open my self to the vastness of this world, and its potential for joy and growth. And be grateful with the joy that accompanies this openness. Retirement, HO!!!

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