Rewired Retired
Life does not stop when you retire.
You do not stop. You have too many choices to make.
There should be a roll of drums and a trumpet fanfare when you retire. You have made it this far in spite of the dangers, near misses, crashes and the ins and outs of relationship, muggers, bankers, her next door and that Ryanair flight to Spain last year. Not to mention putting up with idiots, bullying bosses, opinionated individuals, jobs-worth minions, politicians, racists, religious nutters, supporters of Donald Trump, people who record their every meal on Facebook and obdurate extremists who just know they are right and therefore have the right to insult or even kill you. They are still around but you don’t have to put up with them any more because now you are free.
Relish the thought for a moment.
You have lasted on the earth for many more years than millions of people who were born around the same time as you. Check the data from the life expectancy tables published by the WHO.
You would not have retired at sixty-five had you been born and lived in Sierra Leone. You would have been dead for the last nineteen years. Someone with the same birth date as you in Chad has probably been buried for thirteen years when you retired. Citizens of Mozambique would regard you as being blessed with an extra eleven years before retirement compared to what they expected.
The bonus years dividend is not the end of it. You could now live almost half the length of your life again? What will you do with it this time around?
What you do with this next part of your life is your choice completely. Maybe you didn't have all that many choices the first time around.
Do you remember your first eighteen years? You were put through your paces to meet the requirements others imposed on you. Who is there to impose on you now? What needs to be imposed? What will you choose to put up with?
A vast range of choices is in your hands – options about your health, your way of living, your relationships, your daily activities, your attitude, your opinions, your ways of thinking, and above all the way you will keep your brain healthy so that you will enjoy those minutes that drop so generously around you.
You can choose to change and choose who you want to be.
The choice is wider than standing at a crossroads. It is more like being on a motorway ring road with many exits leading off to a great variety of new places.
Start now. Go to new places in your mind. Develop the habit of thinking laterally, of looking for solutions where you would not normally seek them. Think outside the parameters that your life so far has forced on you. Solve the problems of the country. Rule the world. Answer the imponderable questions that have troubled human intelligence ever since we stopped living in caves; apologies to those who still live in caves.
Feel the world through all your senses and not just those you have always used. See the reality around you through different eyes. Listen for the sounds that you have not had time to notice before and hear them through different melodies and tonalities. Taste the freshness of new things. Delight in strange aromas and textures.
Mix with different cultures. Go to different places, take new trips, experience what it is like to be in a place where you are not a member of the majority ethnic group. Soak up their ways. Don’t hold back.
Now is your time to grasp the future. Rewire your brain and your body for the next phase of your life. The wiring that served you so well in the past is no longer relevant.
Join the ranks of the Rewired Retired (#RewiredRetired) and come fully alive.
Yes, you can.
