You are not old, believe me...

An old fellow fell in love with a lady,
got down on his knees and told her
that there were two things he wished
to ask her. One was, “Will you marry
me?” She replied, “Yes,” and asked
what his second question was. He
replied, “Will you help me up?”
Jokes on retirement tend to make it
synonymous with a toothless,
impotent, arthritic and amnesia-
ridden terminal illness of advancing
age. As an old man said, “There are
three signs of old age. Loss of
memory... I forget the other two!”
There is no consensus on what a
retired person should or should not
do. Many for whom the entire work
years were only a daily ritual of
unvarying actions find the sudden
vacuum hard to cope with and spend
all their time engaged in masterly
inactivity, staring at the ceiling,
minds emptied of every coherent
thought. Continuing to do the same
work even after retirement is hardly
a solution — the solution is to
explore other interests that may
have lain dormant during their work
years and which they can now
indulge in. The man who has interests
outside the work area and who is
passionately interested in the world
around him and the people in it (of
either sex) can never be bored with
the so-called inactivity of
retirement. It's a calamity if you
find that the only exciting thing you
look forward to is the arrival of
your pension. Of course, in our
government offices, such is our
work ethic that you can hardly tell
the difference when someone
retires. Government (to modify
Robert Frost) is a place full of
willing people — a few willing to
work and the majority willing to let
them.
But don't despair. Just look around;
there's so much to do — as John
Burrough said, “I still find each day
too short for all the thoughts I want
to think, all the walks I want to take,
all the books I want to read, and all
the friends I want to see.” You don't
have to pessimistically bemoan your
fate — even if you think you have
nothing to do, you can still practise
to do it well. Those who cope with
retirement best are those who look
upon it as a time of fun and believe
that a good time to retire is before
it is too late to have a good time.
And it is smart to prepare for
retirement right from one's teens.
As Arthur Morgan remarked, “A life
which is empty of purpose until 65
will not suddenly become filled on
retirement.” If you like teaching,
you can teach. You can travel. You
can learn music, cooking, carpentry.
You can try writing. Some
experiments may not always work —
a friend joined FB on his son's
insistence. It bored the life out of
him. He found the coffee-house
atmosphere in FB intellectually
fatiguing and the thing he found
hardest to cope with was saying “he-
he-he-he” to signify mirth.
‘Statutory senility'
Someone called retirement
“statutory senility.” One sure way to
confirm this is for a retiree to
promptly join a ‘senior citizens' club
and sit around among hapless and
tired individuals being fed tiresome
speeches on spirituality interspersed
with tea and multigrain biscuits (on
lucky days they are treated to
samosas!). And if they are well
behaved, their minders will take
them on a picnic where they will
throw a plastic ball at one another
and be fed more speeches about
spirituality. Senility is often used
interchangeably with the ‘senior
citizen' status, that's the tragedy.
But why must you psyche yourself
into thinking that you are getting
old and senile? As George Burns
said, “You can't help getting older,
but you don't have to get old!”
I think that life begins at 60 — once
you begin calling yourself “old,” and
allow yourself to think that the sulci
in your brain are getting shallower
and the gyri are getting flatter,
there is very little anyone can do to
help.