of self-worth. What you have is equated to who you are. It is seen as the measure of your success. Throughout history, one has been evaluated by one’s possessions, whether it be the number of servants, cattle, homes, acreage of land or money. Today many people find this to be shallow thinking, but others discover it is very difficult to retire to a standard of living below what has become their norm in past years.
The family members involved in households with limited means must get together and decide whether they could be comfortable existing under the restraints of a lower standard of living or would an alternate course other than retirement be more advisable, if that option is available.
HOBBIES
Since childhood I have been attracted to the sea. When I was young, I used a tree branch for a fishing rod to fish off a pier and loved to go to the beach and swim. Now, in retirement, I answer the soothing call of the sea. As I sit in front of my computer, I often glance out the window at the lagoon that serves as my muse. Deep sea fishing is my passion. I never feel closer to nature, or God if you are so inclined, than when I toil in my garden or when I am out at sea. The sea calms me better than any chemical tranquilizer ever could. The thrill of hooking and reeling in a fish after a sporting battle refreshes my spirit. It is a spiritual exercise. The sea is my temple, my escape from the world. When the weather doesn’t allow outside activities and I’m not writing, I paint. Many of the walls in my house are now adorned with my best efforts.
Like many jobs, the work that I did for over forty years—listening to people hour upon hour of each working day talking about their deepest thoughts and darkest secrets, requesting help with difficult aspects of their lives and relief from troubling symptoms—was stressful. Although I enjoyed the work immensely and described it like being involved in an interactive soap opera on television all day long, after several months of this heavy burden of responsibility I literally demanded a vacation. These were not vacations of choice, but of necessity, to refresh myself so I could continue functioning at the level required to be at peace and helpful to my patients.
Now that I no longer treat disturbed people, many of whom exhibited vile and unpleasant symptomatology, vacations are once again a luxury and not a necessity. Since my wife and I now enjoy perpetual vacation time, long periods away are no longer needed. Shorter breaks in the usual routine suffice to serve as restoring escapes from the business of everyday living.
Involvement in our hobbies gives us adequate time away from chores to experience such periods of escape from the ordinary.
Reading a good book, riding a bicycle, playing a pleasurable sport or enjoying a lovely day at sea can be adequate vacation substitutes during retirement years, especially when age and physicality curtail maneuverability and make travel a bother.
I want to make a strong case for gardening as a hobby. Some men may consider this a less masculine endeavor, but let me tell you, there are few better ways to exercise and appreciate nature than by planting flowers, pruning shrubs or pulling weeds. Without realizing it, in a few hours you have done hundreds of deep knee bends. Planting or chopping down a tree can give your biceps and triceps a workout. However, the true glory is in the communion with nature: making and watching things grow, giving birth to living things. Thirty-five years ago I planted twenty-six evergreen trees, two rows of thirteen on each side of our small plot of ground. Some of these trees have risen to nearly thirty feet high, giving us much-desired privacy, as houses in shore communities such as ours tend to be built close together. Whenever I look at the rows of greenery at our property edges I appreciate their beauty with a sense of pride.
FRUGALITY
My love for the sea initiated my great wish to live on a large boat and travel at my pleasure. While this was still a pipedream, my wife and I enjoyed taking sea cruises with friends and family during vacation times. When the dream became more of a quest, we began to charter yachts with two other couples to experience life on the sea. What I discovered was a revelation. Buying a live-aboard boat not only entails the initial purchase cost, but the upkeep may be quite expensive. If the owner cannot afford a captain and a crew then he has to become an expert mechanic to tend to the engines by himself while away from shore. However, the more I learned about the costs and difficulties of being the owner of a relatively large boat, the more I realized that I could not afford it and, even if I could, it would at best be a temporary way of life of which we would ultimately tire. We would then hope we could sell our boat for a sufficient fraction of the original cost to be able to buy a new house. So we stayed in our old house, to keep my dream from becoming a nightmare.
Many people do stray into nightmarish situations by allowing their fantasies to overrule their good common sense. God knows what difficulties I would have run into if I had thrown caution to the wind and proceeded to spend my savings on a vessel I could ill afford. I probably would never have made it to retirement and would not be writing this book now. Whatever pleasure I would have experienced might have been drowned in the difficulties encountered out on the open sea.
Each year many new entrepreneurs go bankrupt. Thousands of workers who dream of being self-employed leave their jobs and go out on their own. Those who are fully prepared and perform adequate due diligence have a chance for success. Others, who through lack of education or preparation or both begin either under-capitalized or over-capitalized, are usually doomed to fail. Having a dream is a good thing, if it’s a possible dream. As with Don Quixote, impossible dreams lead to failure. Depending on the age of the individual or the amount of the loss, a business failure can obliterate the dream of any retirement.
Appreciate the value of frugality in choosing a lifestyle, if retirement is a goal when one no longer works at a daily job. More wild schemes are prone to fail than to succeed. At a young age one can fail and try again, because time is not yet a major factor, but at an advanced age time is precious.
BURNOUT
As I brought up earlier, the greatest determinant in regard to retirement readiness is self-awareness. The recognition of when one has reached his or her limit with a vocation is vital to knowing when it is time to quit and move on.
In my own life I have had several such epiphanies. As an undergraduate I trained to be a pharmacist, but after several years behind pharmacy counters I realized I would never be satisfied filling out prescriptions ordered by others. I wanted to be the physician making the diagnosis and writing the prescriptions. I wanted the responsibility of issuing the orders for the care and therapy of the patient. I consider pharmacy a noble profession and cherish it for having given me the ability to work and earn enough to pay my medical school tuition fees. However, I wanted to go on to study medicine.
Later I had a career choice to make. Throughout my medical school training I had envisioned myself becoming an internist and was sure it was my future to practice internal medicine, so I declined a prized surgical residency with the assurance of a partnership in a lucrative practice. However, during my internship I reassessed myself, my desires and abilities and determined I was best suited to the practice of psychiatry.
Upon completing my psychiatric residency, I was offered junior partnerships in the practices of two of the busiest psychiatrists in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Although this would mean less start-up costs, with shared expenses, I declined these invitations. I knew I would find the greatest gratification in building my own practice and doing it my way. So, despite having meager savings, I went out on my own.
For twenty-five years I lectured as a professor of psychiatry at a medical school and was invited to lecture at prominent universities. I became a leading
