Twilight Reminiscences 36 – When Regrets Replace Dreams

The other day I visited an old friend – someone who had been my classmate from primary school.

He had retired from a job he had done from the time he left school until he retired at the age of sixty, and he now lives with his wife in what he refers to as “comfortable retirement”.

But what struck me as we shared a cup of tea and some biscuits that morning is that he spends his time doing nothing except reading the papers, watching TV, meditating and chatting with his wife and his neighbours. He tells me that he is happy – although he also kept telling me that he has some regrets now about some of the decisions he made in his life and that life did not turn out the way he would have liked.

I accept that what he does now seems to work for him and I should not be critical just because that is not how I would like to spend my own retirement. I cannot help thinking that there must be more to life than sitting at home after retirement doing nothing and regretting what could have been.

There is a saying attributed to the great American actor John Barrymore which I thought about after I had been to visit my friend.

“A man is not old” quoted Barrymore “until regrets take the place of dreams.”

As I remind myself and those of my old friends and schoolmates who care to listen to me, we are all now well past the Minimum Age of Retirement (as clearly defined in Act of Parliament No 28 of 2021). Thanks to modern health care and more enlightened lifestyles (at least in most of us!) we are in better physical shape now than those of the previous generation – and still able to work, if we so desire, well into our seventies.

By this time our children should have left home and got on their own feet. We should have earned enough during our working life to live, if not in luxury, at least in a state where we are not financially dependent on others. We have reached the age where we do not need to keep working to earn a monthly salary in order to put rice on the table. Working at our age is not a necessity but a privilege.

Should we continue to work when we reach the age of seventy?

One of my classmates still runs a successful international business. Flying regularly to Indonesia, Hong Kong and the UK where he has staff working for him, he keeps himself enjoyably busy. Another former classmate who was a busy medical specialist now works three mornings a week – allowing those of his patients who have grown old with him to still consult him because they trust him and have confidence in him, and allowing younger specialists to discuss patients with him and benefit from his vast experience. Another old friend, a retired army officer, keeps himself busy using his administrative and logistic skills working for a well-established legal firm. There is another former classmate who spent many decades holding important posts in the diplomatic service and has now decided to write a book, allowing him to share his wide experience and insights with others.  

Others of our classmates who have retired completely from work now spend their time doing different things to keep themselves occupied, ensuring that their brain cells get a work out now and then and allowing them to stay connected with other people. Retiring from full time work should not be an opportunity to do nothing – to avoid interacting with others and becoming a recluse. Volunteer work, charity work, being involved with philanthropic or religious organisations – all these allow one to stay connected and provide these organisations with the benefit of one’s knowledge and experience. Retirement should not be a time to sit in one’s haansi-putuwa and only exercise the muscles needed to manipulate the remote control on the TV!

Most of all, retirement should not be a time to look back with regret on what one could have accomplished and did not. This is not a time for regret and thinking “What if?” or “I should have done that instead of being stuck doing this.”

This is a time to enjoy the present, to entertain dreams with the children and (if we are lucky to have them) with the grandchildren, and even to dream with them.

And this is a time to take care of our health. We have still not passed our ‘Use-by’ date – there is still plenty of life left in us. As Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote in that classic poem Ulysses: “How dull it is to pause, to make an end, to rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!”

And later: “As tho’ to breathe were life! Death closes all: but something ere the end, some work of noble note, may yet be done.”

Retirement should not be a time to sit back and do nothing, bemoaning what could have been. There are still years left to us in retirement – time during which we can utilize our experience and skills to be useful to society.

And even Time, perhaps, to Dream!