Retiring can be an adventure

In some ways retiring (I've been basically retired for 20 years now since I was 50 and was forced to retire by my health and my wife) In some ways retiring can be an adventure. At the time my youngest daughter was only 2 1/2 years old and I decided that I was going to refuse to die (which I did refuse to die) and I stayed alive so my daughter wouldn't have to grow up without a father.

But, to make more sense of this, in some ways it was the single best thing that happened to me in my life besides my children being born. Because it forced me not to think of myself anymore as a 25 year old "immortal" man.

There is this thing about men if you are physically active that sometimes you think you can just go on like that forever. Well, you can and you can't.

For example, I was a rock climber in my early 20s before my children started to be born then and then I was 37 one day with my children on the ocean and rock climbing because I figured I didn't need ropes because if I peeled off a cliff I would just fall into the ocean and be okay. But, then I did only a class 4 or 5 move and tore most of the muscles off the back of my right knee and found myself in the water about 30 feet below me and it was cold (around 57 degrees or so and I had trouble breathing with that cold water and then my right leg wouldn't work. So, yes, I had survived okay except I couldn't swim right because my right leg wouldn't work because I had just torn off most of the muscles from the back of my right knee. So, I was sort of half drowning fighting the waves trying to get into shore without drowning from water much too cold and a right leg that couldn't kick because it was injured and then I couldn't stand up either because my right leg didn't work anymore so even in 3 to 4 feet of water at shore I was still sort of drowning.

So, I had done something that would have been an easy no brainer in my 20s but by 37 I almost had died doing this same thing. So, once again at 50 I had to reinvent myself after almost dying for 8 months and being forced to retire so I wouldn't die. At all these points in life you have to be able to adapt to all the changes which is hard because you get used to doing things one way and then everything changes: (children grow up and go off to college, their dogs die from old age or whatever, you get older, you might get divorced and remarried or not). All these things are about adaptation which might be the most important skill you need to get to old age and retirement (no matter at what age you retire at).

I'm thinking that retiring early is better than retiring later simply because if you don't retire early enough you might not adapt.  Because it took me 5 years to adapt fully to retirement. For example, my father only lived 5 years or so after he retired so I had to watch him die only 5 years after he retired. However, I have already lived 20 years since I retired Fall of 1998 and then I knew i wasn't likely going to die in May of 1999.

So, learning to be adaptable and capable of having adventures is a big part of staying alive after retirement. You might almost die many many times just like me. But, learning to roll with the punches you might also be alive at 100 or even 110 too. So, whenever I'm healthy enough I ski and ride a motorcycle and snorkel in places like Hawaii and I hike almost every day I'm home on the coast in the forests where I live. Unfortunately our last dog died about 1 1/4 years ago and the German Shepard puppy we got was really just too much for us at this age. I'm 71 and my wife is in her mid 60s.

We have pretty much realized we are too old to raise another puppy, especially one as high energy as a German Shepard puppy. He now lives in Las Vegas with his new trainer owner there. So, he's okay too. But, we were sad we realized we were just too old to deal with all the bleeding from love bites all the time from our puppy and we didn't have the skills to train a dog who might be 80 to 125 pounds properly and would be easily able to jump over cars. His Grandfather was world champion Shutzhund by the way which is a type of show police dog training where they have to do all sorts of things like jump over cars on command.

So, traveling and visiting our children and friends and relatives is how we stay young in retirement. Most of what you did in your teens and 20s you can still do if you are careful in your 50s to 100s if you stay healthy enough. You just have to pace yourselves more. But, if you know yourself enough you can have a really amazing retirement.



By God's Grace