we are called upon to give up cherished activities and people we love and admire. It is a time of trying our resilience as we never have before. It is a time of pain, a time of loss and a time of such despair to some people. It is a time when we may have to rely more on others than at any other period since early childhood. It is a time when we are robbed of our strength, our vitality, our good looks and vanity and are left only to recall the memories of these precious things taken from us. However, it can also be a time wherein we muster sufficient energy to retain hope for the pleasures yet to come: victories yet to be won, birthdays yet uncelebrated, weddings yet to be danced at, books still unread, movies and plays yet unseen and music yet unheard. If we cannot dance at those weddings, we can stand or sit at the side of the dance floor and clap. In what time is left to us, we must go on in joy, despite our pain and disabilities. We can conquer the adversity of old age with a sense of good purpose, with courage and conviction in our ability to overcome the ravages of aging.
REFLECTIONS
As more of life lies behind than in front, there is more to recall than to anticipate and subsequently memories capture more of the thinking hours, especially in a leisure-oriented environment. Daydreaming also becomes more frequent when there is additional time to spend with one’s inner self. The long-suppressed questions that continue to nag on beg attention. What would have been had I done this instead of that? If I had chosen another path from the one I did go down? Second-guessing is the fool’s errand of a mind with time to waste. When time is relatively short, time is a precious commodity not to be wasted in useless supposition. Live well with the choices you have made. They were the best you could do given the circumstances, your background and what you were comfortable with at the time. We all make good and bad choices during a lifetime. The success lies, as with all things, in the percentages and the balance the choices create. As long as they tilt toward the positive, as most likely they do to have gotten you to this point, be satisfied with yourself and do not dwell on what might have been. Had you chosen differently, things could be much worse.
In contrast to obsessive thinking about possible mistakes, focus on the most successful things in your life: your family, your achievements and the happiest moments of your existence.
REGRESSION
It is natural to consider retirement to be a return to a form of childhood. Old age has often been called “a second childhood.” In the worst sense it means to focus on the childlike senility of seniors, with loss of memory, decrease in bodily functions and sometimes questionable behavior; but in the best of cases, the ones we strive for, it means reaching a plateau of contentment, what some call Nirvana. In ancient Sanscrit, Nirvana means “a blowing out”: the blowing out of senseless striving, of useless competition, of the need for envy and wishing harm to befall others and instead reaching the degree of security of a happy childhood.1 This is the goal of a life based on the attainment of serenity, not merely achievement. The greatest achievers may be unhappy and unfulfilled in other aspects of their lives, while those who seek out the road to self-gratification in harmony with their environment gain the solace of peace.
In all of your endeavors, an avenue of moderation—avoiding extremes—appears to be the proper path to a contented later life, after labor’s end.
There is no crime in catering to the inner child, present in all of us, when we no longer need to hide the craving for this indulgence. Wishes can now become realities. Previous deprivations need no longer occur. Goals can be met, strivings fulfilled, wrongs corrected and overdue obligations given attention to. The personal world, which might have seemed to be going in the wrong direction, can be made right again.
LOVE
It goes without saying that love is the most important human emotion. Often overused, the word love is attached to inanimate objects as well as people. In many societies humans have sometimes come to love things more than people. This is particularly true in persons who have been hurt and disappointed by those close to them, particularly when they were young and formulating their relationships to others.
The damage caused by painful experiences in the prototypical relationships with parents and surrogates can lead to an inability to fully trust or relate properly, even to a love object. A resultant psychological armor can then engulf the individual so as to not allow that closeness of spirit that is required in true caring. The sensitivity required to appreciate the feelings of others is then lessened to the point, at times, of inflicting hurt and in the extreme even harm, with little or no care.
Without even considering sociopathy, we have to address the hardening of feelings that may occur in a life filled with perceived disappointment, failure and perhaps even cruelty. These psychological deficiencies, undetected and unaddressed in earlier times of avoidance and repression, might, with greater self-awareness, be brought to one’s attention and treated. Even people who merely unintentionally have neglected those who are close to them due to work distraction might, in retirement, seek professional help to overcome these causes of love blockage. Retirement, in these cases, may be a time to consider getting individual or couples counseling in order to improve, or even save, those relationships.
Having spent a sizeable portion of my career administering geriatric psychiatric care, I can attest to the value of psychotherapy, as well as the usual medicinal therapy required in the treatment of older patients. Many adjustment difficulties of the retirement period can be worked out, gaining emotional improvement with proper therapy.
Everyone deserves to be able to enjoy and appreciate true love during their lifetimes. It is the right and privilege of every human being. To not have experienced it in one form or another, be it love of a partner, family member, cherished work or devoted cause, is a psychological deficit and leaves a void. To have reached the retirement age without having experienced it due to an intrapsychic blockage is a condition that may be treatable; therapy is advised. The old saying “Love makes the world go around” is self-explanatory in describing how romantics feel about this emotion. Without love there is no sense of true caring, no feeling of completeness, no exhilaration of spirit.
Some find a substitute in religion or devotion to a cause to compensate for lack of person-to-person commitment, but without love there is an undeniable emptiness. Unfortunately, I have encountered this suffering in the psychotherapy of older, usually depressed, patients, who feel a loss of love, being ignored or neglected.
SAFETY
Having lived a life to the point of being able to no longer need to work to earn a living usually means that there has also been an accumulation of the trappings of wealth: pieces of art, furs, jewelry, valuable coins and the like, bought or inherited over a lifetime. These may be precious to their owners because of the memories and associations attached to them, besides their monetary value. They are also the target of burglars. Homes with such valuables should be adequately insured and protected with burglar alarms. The loss of the life of a loved one is the most devastating of losses, but the loss of objects of attachment which may have come to represent such a loss can also be a cruel blow and has to be protected against. While affection for non-living items has been denigrated as misplaced caring, those who have become enamored with such memorabilia can be severely hurt by a criminal intrusion, especially when these items are representations of important events and barriers against loneliness.
PETS
If
