What’s the biggest lie we tell ourselves about retirement?
SARA LAWRENCE-LIGHTFOOT: We live in a culture that is preoccupied with launchings, entrances, startups. We applaud the spirit, gumption and promise of beginnings. We admire the moment when people throw themselves into something new, plan and execute a new project, embark on important work, get married, take an adventure; perpetually poised for the next opportunity, tilting toward the future, never looking back. We applaud, and ritualize those moments of moving forward; bold steps in life and love; a chance to redefine our identity. These are likely to be moments of hope, optimism and expectation as we compose the next chapter for ourselves.
By contrast, our exits are often ignored or invisible. They represent the negative spaces in our life journeys; shadowy retreats that do not warrant our attention, even sources of embarrassment and humiliation. There are few lessons—in our culture, in our schooling, in our socialization, in our professional development—in how to exit well, even gracefully.
So the first lie about retirement—a major life exit—is that it is unimportant; that it does not deserve our notice, that it is even a sign of weakness, decline, or impotence. Let’s call this a lie of omission, one that injures by being silenced and unspoken. We need to challenge this hidden lie by making it visible; by reframing and ritualizing our exits; by readjusting our cultural lens in order to see and compose our retirements. We must view these farewells as important opportunities for reflection, recalibration and regeneration; a time for probing pause, a rare chance to look backwards into the future. In other words we must turn our retirements into significant moments that give fertile ground for rebirth and reinvention.
The second lie is one of commission. When people speak about their retirements; they tend to cast them as wonderful or awful; plentiful or empty, enlarging or humiliating. They see their retirements as either/or experiences. But the truth is that retirement is inevitably both good and bad, and everyone feels the twin—often warring—sensations of loss and liberation. Part of the challenge of retirement, then, is resisting the either/or lie and finding a way to embrace the contradictions, ride out the tensions, and live through the confusing beautiful/ugly moments that shape the tender and treacherous journey that anticipates the next chapter.
Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot is the Emily Hargroves Fisher professor of Education at Harvard University. She is a MacArthur prize winner and author of the recent book, “EXIT: The Endings that Set Us Free.”
