The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything

8

The dream we all have that is completely wrong

I will never get the chance to ask him about it, but I’m sure the saddest I saw Mr. Wilson was on those final few weeks before he retired. He didn’t want to go. He loved the students, he loved the school, he loved helping kids navigate their paths in life.

The government forced him to give up the thing he wanted most. They took away Monday-morning coffees with the guidance office secretaries, hallway walks at lunch, and the energy from a thousand teenagers every day. They took away his sense of helping kids through family troubles, failing grades, and anxiety about decisions. They took away the things he loved the most.

Mr. Wilson taught me that retirement, as we think of it today, isn’t a dream we actually want. We don’t actually want to do nothing. We just want to do something we love.

Hazel McCallion was ninety-three years old when she decided she would retire from being mayor of Mississauga, Ontario, Canada’s fifth-largest city. That’s after she held the job for more than forty straight years, winning twelve straight elections, and outlasting eight Canadian prime ministers.

Why did she keep going nearly thirty years after “retirement age”?

“There are still challenges,” she said. “I don’t know what I’d do. And I want to keep busy.”

We want challenges. Challenges let us contribute a sense of giving, learning, and improving to ourselves and the world. We feel alive. We experience life. We feel like we can do anything.

According to Merriam-Webster, retirement means “withdrawal from one’s position or occupation or from active working life.” In other words, dropping out and going home. Dropping your withered bones off at the beach. What happens when you withdraw from active working life? You idle, which is defined as “to spend time doing nothing.” What happens when you do nothing? You get bored.

According to Merriam-Webster, boredom is “the state of being weary and restless through lack of interest.”

Feeling weary because one is unoccupied.

Is that what you want?

Indonesian author Toba Beta says, “You get old faster when you think about retirement.”

So what’s the dream we all have that is completely wrong?

Retirement.

Fortune magazine published a report saying the two most dangerous years of our lives are the year we’re born . . . and the year we retire.

There’s a reason retirement killed my favorite guidance counselor.

Because we give away our ikigai and we do it to ourselves, with planning, with purpose.

Together with the sudden loss of Social, Structure, Stimulation, and Story, what we find in the barren tundra of retirement is the cold, wet, guilt-drenched thought that this is what we wanted, this is what we worked our whole lives toward, this is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

But there is no pot of gold.

Remember the 4 S’s when you’re lost.

The world has far more problems, opportunities, and challenges than it has people like you to do interesting and meaningful work on them. There is so much you can do. There are so many places to go. I know when you look you’ll always find meaty projects and passionate causes you can sink your teeth into.

Just keep learning, keep changing, and keeping growing.

And promise me that you will never retire.