Jubilee

by Ken Stern

Photo by Aditya Menon on Unsplash

I hate the word “retirement”. It carries so much baggage. People assume they know what you mean when you use the term, which limits inquiry and the opportunity for a deeper understanding.

Retirement often gets interpreted, especially by younger people, as a giving up, a resting on one’s laurels, an absence of striving for personal growth. It’s as if you’re one step closer to death. This is not the experience of my friends who are no longer working. A negative, visceral reaction to the word retirement is, in itself, often an obstacle to people moving forward to the next phase of their lives. In fact, the connotations and associations with the word retirement were holding me back from leaving my work as a lawyer. “I still feel vital and I love being engaged,” I said to myself. “I don’t want to give up or be complacent. I’m not ready for that.”

In confronting this dilemma, I searched for a better term than retirement for describing my post-work experience. The word “Jubilee” popped up. I really wasn’t sure what it meant, so I looked it up and found the following definition: “A special anniversary celebrating 25 or 50 years of an activity” or “according to Hebrew law, a time of emancipation and restoration.” I have added my own words to this definition: “a time of opportunity, creativity and discovery.” Recasting the next phase of my life as Jubilee was thrilling. I became very excited about embracing a time of increased emancipation, discovery, and creativity.

As I pondered Jubilee, I wondered what creativity might mean for me in this phase of life. My most compelling conclusion was that creativity during the Jubilee phase involved doing new things, especially pursuits that expanded my boundaries and challenged my comfort zone. I committed to pursuing activities that I previously had determined I didn’t have the time or the necessary skills to accomplish. I came up with three goals initially: playing a stringed instrument, doing puzzles, and learning to be a good cook. Embracing puzzle work came easily although I wasn’t very good at it. My morning puzzle time has been both fun and challenging. Learning to play a stringed instrument was a different matter. I had taken guitar lessons in my 50s and the only thing I learned was that my fingers could not successfully form a chord. For my Jubilee party, my wife gave me a ukulele and a series of lessons. She had been told the ukulele was a lot easier to play and I could move on to the guitar if I was so inclined. I struggled mightily at first, but with the patient support of my wonderful instructor, I made progress. Slow and steady progress. Now, while I’m no virtuoso, I can competently play a variety of songs. I often choose old songs that have special meaning to me. Learning to be a better cook never got off the ground. My wife and I agreed to maintain the status quo for both of our benefits.

To thrive in Jubilee, it was necessary for me to reevaluate the goals and activities that had defined my previous adult life. I needed to emancipate myself from many of my previous ways of thinking and behaviors. I explored who I am at this stage of my life and created a way of being that is compatible with my current true self and that makes my heart sing. After much exploration, my current approach to this stage of life can be summarized by the mantra: “I seek engagement that is not stressful.”

Once I began to understand who I am and what I want in Jubilee, I had to engage in a discovery process of building a new way to be in the world. I visualized my life as a mosaic filled with many tiles of different sizes and shapes that represent different aspects of my life. In the past, two huge tiles- my career and my family- filled up most of the frame with other important activities around the edges. Now that I am not working, and my children are adults, there is room for many more tiles of different sizes, shapes, and colors. While I remain committed to my part-time practice as a life coach and to spending time with my grandkids, my mosaic remains spacious and I can experiment with different combinations and levels of engagement. I work hard to free myself from the voice in my head that tells me what I “should” do and offers other limiting messages; my goal is to focus on what my heart desires consistent with whom I am now.

In my working life, I felt motivated to do things on a grand scale with the potential for a big impact. In Jubilee, a profound part of recreating my life is the discovery that doing small things that have a more immediate impact and reward give me the most satisfaction. I volunteer in my grandkids’ school which is very diverse, racially and economically, and where there are very few volunteers. Working with individual kids or small groups of students has felt very rewarding. I leave the school feeling energized and excited about my next sessions with the students. In the past I would not have been satisfied to work on such a small scale. I would have aspired to create a new program for the school and use my energy and contacts to recruit an army of volunteers. While I recognize that such a large project would be very helpful, and while my brain encourages me to do it, my heart informs me that such a project is not a good fit with my true self as it exists today. I much prefer the smaller endeavor of working with individual students. There are certainly times I need to engage in self-talk to stave off those grandiose thoughts and stay true to who I am today and what feels fulfilling. I am a work in progress and sometimes I struggle and fall short.

I am blessed with good health, great friends, a fabulous family and financial security. Together they comprise a solid bedrock for this stage my life. I recognize that I have the privilege to follow my heart. I appreciate that my wonderful circumstances provide an opportunity to make Jubilee such an exciting and enriching time in my life.