The Days Are Long But the Years Are Short

Before entering retirement the priority had to be on finances, that is, making sure that income covered expenses, not only immediately but for the long-term.

Physical changes due to aging have needed to be addressed, too, and more consideration and planning had to be given to diet, exercise, and sleep. Of course, these "burdens" are nothing compared to life while working.

What I didn't think about was how I would respond to removal of the necessity to keep a daily calendar, with its prioritized task list and careful scheduling of due dates.

To the extent I thought about it at all, it seemed that I would be even more productive and efficient, tending to long-deferred home and learning projects. Taking to heart the accounting concept of depreciation, "remaining useful life" of, say, 20 more years instead of 50 years that it was just yesterday, I would surely be more productive now that I'm working for myself instead of others.

But that's not how it's turning out to be. In a corollary to Parkinson's law, retirement activities have expanded to fill the time available for completion. Visits to the gym used to take an hour. Now two- and three-hour walks burn the same number of calories as one-hour workouts, yet I do the former because I find them more enjoyable.

Managing time has become less important though paradoxically the time remaining is shorter.

One of the major joys of retirement has been the luxury of spending more time on those things I look forward to doing, with no deadlines to rein me in, no obligations that require me to make those hard choices about how to spend each day. What continues to surprise me is how many of those activities turn out to be exactly the ones I have been advised to cut back...

While grinding away on an exercise bike or in a gym is always an option, hourlong walks up and down the hills in my neighborhood is my favorite go-to exertion. They stimulate new ways of looking at a particular challenge, including something as simple as coming up with the words to help reconnect with a long-lost friend...

Meal preparation is another area ripe for shortcuts...I could assemble a dinner with almost no prep work to be ready at whatever hour I punch in. It’s easy, but it defeats one of the most enjoyable aspects of cooking—preparing meals with implements that might have been used hundreds of years ago whose sturdiness and texture I can feel as I begin dicing, grating and mixing.

I know these idyllic days won't last. There will come a point when a health scare will force me to dust off the daily planning calendar with its hard deadlines and concomitant stress. Meanwhile, I shall live as if these days will go on forever.

Because we don't know when we will die,
we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well.
Yet everything happens only
a certain number of times,
and a very small number really.
How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood,
some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive
of your life without it.
Perhaps four or five times more, perhaps not even that.
How many more times will you watch the full moon rise?
Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.

--Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky

&copy 2022 Stephen Yuen