“This is the morning view from my own front yard — a place that reminds me daily that we are more than what we’ve done.”
Without having looked for it, I seem to have drawn clients who are either nearing retirement or have recently retired.
As much as people look forward to retirement, when it comes, it can be bewildering. It’s pretty common for people to be so identified with what they did for a living, when their work comes to an end, so does their sense of identity. It’s a feeling of, “If I’m not doing my work, who can I possibly be?”
It’s remarkably easy to mistake surface for substance, to mistake the superficial for the substantial.
We take what is essentially a detail about our life — for example, what I do to earn a living — and define ourselves by that detail. Regardless of how it may seem, that particular detail never had anything to do with who I really am.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t necessarily become obvious until retirement, at which point, it feels like driving off a cliff.
When this happens, the tendency is to look for activities and experiences to fill up the day — anything that will push away the horrible emptiness of “I don’t know who I am anymore.”
This is nothing more than a distraction mechanism that keeps you confused and focused on who you think you’re not. It won’t get you any closer to who you really are.
What You Do May Change. Who You Are Does Not.
There couldn’t be a better time to see this: what you do may change. Who you are does not.
This becomes obvious when we take the time to really look within ourselves — something most of us struggle with. It’s this lack of connection to who you really are that creates the illusion, and it is an illusion, that the absence of your life’s work somehow diminishes you.
The truth is, you are everything that you ever were.
Despite how it may feel, nothing of substance has been taken from you. What’s gone is an automatic way of going through the days of the week.
I don’t mean to take away from the important work you may have done in your life, but to confuse who you are at a fundamental level, with what you do for a living, is at best a time bomb. A day will come when you stop working, that the bomb will go off, and the confusion and doubt that follow are likely to convince you there’s something wrong with you.
Your Identity After Retirement Is Bigger Than What You’ve Done
All of us are more than the sum total of what we’ve done in our lives.
Our work, our skills, our experiences, our accomplishments, can be wonderful — but if we define ourselves solely by them, we completely miss our essence.
Three recent cases of people failing to see they’re more than their work come to mind.
In all three cases, these people lacked an understanding of their fundamental value as conscious beings. For them, it was all about doing, doing, doing. It was never about simply being.
In these particular cases — because these three were figures devoted to public service — there was an enormous cost to the public good when they were unable to face the fact that the time had come for them to retire.
The three are:
- Former President Joe Biden
- Former Senator Dianne Feinstein
- Former Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
I’d be willing to bet that each of them had this question in mind: Who will I be if I retire?
These three are extreme cases, partly because all three were in positions of great power, and it’s likely they could no longer imagine themselves without that power.
One of the tendencies connected to holding a powerful position is to be so completely consumed by your work, it doesn’t seem like there’s time to reflect, to look inward, to remember who you really are.
That can seem to work as long as your mind is consumed by your work.
But when the work is taken from you? That’s when the sensation of driving off the cliff appears.
There is an alternative.
It doesn’t matter how long you have before you retire — or if you’re already retired. If driving off a cliff doesn’t sound appealing to you, looking inward at what doesn’t change is the only sure way I know of to get yourself back to a place where you don’t feel like a stranger to yourself.
Just remember:
Who you are is too big to be contained in a thought, a concept, or words.
Don’t look for yourself using those tools; they will only lead you away from yourself.
Whatever your stage in life, remembering who you are beyond your work is the clearest path through the fog of identity after retirement.
If you found something in this that speaks to you, I’ve written a book called The Slightly Older Person’s Guide to Graceful Aging. It’s a collection of short reflections — written for anyone curious about how to live a simpler, more rewarding life as they age.
