The problem with achieving a peaceful retirement is that none of us wants to accept defeat, sensing any defeat we find it hard to surrender because it’s seen as cowardly or weak. Any failure or loss must be left at the door. Most of us are tremendously happy when things go our way but if we flip the coin and frustration comes-a-knockin we get distressed, we tend towards anger and struggle to break free, mulling it over incessantly. Our training thus far is to leave our emotions unattended and hidden. The instruction provided is to: just get over it. Entering retirement we pray that mishaps and controversy will pass by quickly, we may even appeal to God for some help or guidance to pave a calm and peaceful road ahead, but is this strategy working for everyone?
How do we live in peace with our neighbours? Even with a strong willful approach, money security assured and a host of clear intentions we still tend to trip over ourselves when little annoyances push us into a gloomy corner, these fears and worries put strains on our ability to love and our prayers can fall short of delivering any meaningful change.
What’s going on here? We easily slip into feeling lost or abandoned, our inclination is to feel let down and we look for someone to step up and save us from ourselves. It’s wrong thinking that gets in our way. Interestingly, we lose sight of the truth that our emotions are so totally natural and essential to being human, to be alive. We are encouraged to run away and avoid them at every bend in the road. It’s insane that we are so misguided, taught that creating ‘emotional distance’ somehow creates more objectivity or clarity, imaging that this makes us better providers to our family. The story goes, if you are successful at hiding your emotions: all will be well. We end up spending so much energy avoiding them that we need a regular vacation from our own confused thinking. It’s exhausting.
“ To Find Yourself, Think For Yourself” – Socrates
If you have developed a healthy view of life you will have begun to understand your boundaries and know where to set limitations. This means we turn towards our feelings, we face them whilst noticing how they disturb our peace and the well-being of others. Our normal is all wrong. A strong pattern of complaining and whining about life seems to have crept into our society but as they say, whinging changes nothing. In the end, this is it, there is nowhere else to go, you drag around your thoughts wherever you decide to hang out but right here in this present moment, it’s inescapable, the truth of who you are, that’s real. Just because you have aged a little doesn’t mean you have to stop seeking out new places to grow. An important awareness is for us to stop believing we know it all – it’s only then can we ask for help. God may actually be ready to listen then.
It’s community and relationships that make us human, we all need someone so trying to go it alone never works and it’s definitely not a show of strength as some would have you believe. It’s a fact of life that even after all our hard work, after a lifetime of mastering our careers and raising a family we still have many unmet needs. Our society sends out a bunch of mixed messages – keep striving, keep bearing down and you’ll find independence and freedom, but in the end, all we yearn for is to be loved and to belong. Independence is just another illusion pushed onto us for profit, but many like to pretend they have achieved it.
Perhaps it’s all this striving, all these trials and tribulations to become someone special, someone unique, that has got us stuck in quicksand all this time. Slowly sinking we feel like we’re treading water. It’s a common result, we get frustrated and become doubtful that the path we’re on is the right one. It’s certainly profitable for others when we keep changing our minds. It’s hard to escape the cultural norms that surround us, looking for beauty, financial status, popularity or an athletic body type, it keeps pushing us all around. Where do you travel to find perfection? The only certainty is therefore uncertainty.
With all this misinformation about who we are supposed to be and where to find our higher selves it’s understandable we have lost our inner peace. Our constant efforts to cover up our weak spots mean we shy away from our limitations, and the emotions we don’t want others to see end up meaning we don’t see them ourselves let alone accept them in others. Being vulnerable therefore is a bridge too far. We’d rather go to war than wave an olive branch.
Being separate from our emotional reality and our vibrant inner world how do we hope to discover peace, losing sight of our divinity we become removed from our true human essence, our purpose. Our very survival depends on mother nature yet we are deluded into thinking we are in charge, the truth is we are inseparable from nature. Even the most ignorant thinkers amongst us know that nature has its limits. Wisdom tells us our power is limited not limitless.
Finding peace in retirement is about getting in touch and being real with what we’re facing. Life is tough so the trick is to see the challenges you face as part of the game of life, if you spend your life hoping to avoid the difficulties then inevitably peace will fail. We set an impossible task for ourselves, tripping over the truth once again, continuing our confusion. Retirement is seen as a transition stage but it’s also a transformation stage – but we must be ready. It’s a great opportunity to transform our sorrows, pain and longings into joy, gratitude and love, only then can we stop inflicting our unchecked negative emotions onto others, going to war, pushing everyone away, and causing sadness, separation and regret. No peace can be found here on this earth.
Instead of wanting to dominate, control and abuse others in order to stay safe, we can turn towards each other, knowing we are crucially dependent on each other for survival. We are actually ‘inter- dependant’ on the entire human race. Our innermost sense of identity has never been independent of others, we have never been an isolated individual and it’s this misunderstanding that keeps us separate from ourselves and from the peace we seek.
