A Useful Word In Retirement

I know this is going to sound strange, but I have read several articles recently about a single Danish word.  This word was voted the favorite word in Denmark in a contest ending in September of last year, and that is what seems to have attracted the attention of copy writers who are desperate to find a subject to write about so they can meet a deadline.  The word is "pyt" (pronounced like pid in Denmark).  The word seems to have caught the eye of a relatively large group of writers and a few readers like myself.

The contest to determine the favorite word was conducted by the Danish Library Association, and the public was invited to vote on their favorite.  I first saw this word when I was reading about the happiness level of the Danish population when compared with populations in other parts of the world.  Denmark seems to always rank among the happiest two or three countries of the world when surveys are conducted.  It recently ranked second behind Finland on the United Nations 2019 Happiest Countries Index. A big part of the reason may be this little word -- "pyt".  As a matter of reference, the United States ranked nineteenth on the same index.

Some Danish to English translation dictionaries indicate that "pyt" = "puddle", but this seems to be an oversimplification.

There is no word for word English translation for this word.  English speakers have to use a couple of sentences to describe the meaning.  Here is one of the attempts I found on the internet:   ‘Pyt’ is used to express that you accept a situation is out of your control, and even though you might be annoyed or frustrated, you decide not to waste unnecessary energy on thinking more about it. You accept it and move on.

Is there a connection with this word being the favorite word and the overall happiness level of the Danish population?  Maybe we need a word like this in English.  Then we could use it when something out of our control goes bad, instead of the (four letter) words we typically use that indicate things like anger or total disgust.  Perhaps we Americans would be as generally happy as the Danes if we wasted less energy thinking about annoying or frustrating things that are out of our control.

Since my blog is about the thoughts of a retired guy,  I thought I might relate this to retirement.  Retirement is not a new life.  It is a stage of life. 

A lot of people get concerned about how to get ready for retirement.  Or what they will do in retirement.  Or when is the best time to retire.  It seems like more planning goes into retirement than for any other stage of life.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower once said, "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."  Another famous general, Colin Powell is quoted as saying, "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy."

"Planning is indispensable, but plans are worthless,"  because life is what happens while we are making other plans.

No matter how much we plan, things not covered by the plan will happen.  Even if we do everything perfectly our lives will not be perfect.  Yes, even in retirement.  It does mean that the most important thing in a good retirement is not the planning for, but the living it to the fullest.  That is how we can be happiest.

This collection of essays are my thoughts as I try to do that.

One Day

One Day -- Looking Back

Several years ago, not long after I retired I was reading some Facebook posts and saw this thought in one of the posts:

“One day, you'll be just a memory for some people.  Do your best to be a good one.”

Retirement is a separate stage of life and will create memories of its own.  We create memories for ourselves, but more importantly we create memories for other people with what we do.

When I first saw the statement about trying to be a good memory I thought, "Wow that is perceptive!"  And I thought that trying to be a good memory would be a good retirement goal.  After I started publishing this blog I even wrote a blog post about those thoughts, but I never was satisfied with what I wrote so I never posted it.  It is probably a good thing because over time I have changed my opinion and I now think that doing my best to be a good memory would not be a good goal in retirement.  

This morning I received an email that made me remember the thought above so I thought I would attempt a rewrite.  This blog post is the attempted rewrite.

The email was from one of my very good friends letting us know that his mother had passed away in the wee hours of the morning.  This great lady will now be just a memory for some people, and I know from previous conversations with my friend that she will be a good one; but not because she tried to be a good one.

Funerals are largely times for remembering people.  They are times for remembering the person who has passed, but they are also times for remember those who are left behind and how our lives have mingled with one another.  I have heard people at funerals remember that someone did something because that is just who they were, or because they really had a passion for something, or because they just had a love of life or of all of the people around them.  But never once have I heard at a funeral anyone say, "He or she tried to be a good memory."

I now think our goal in retirement should be to live as who we are, live according to our passions, live according to who and what we love in life.  If we do that, the memories will take care of themselves. 

Fifty-third Best

One day this summer, while driving between Brainerd and Nisswa  in Minnesota, I read a billboard.  The billboard said something that caught my eye.  It was an advertisement for a resort in the area and said that the resort was rated fifty-third best in the world.  My first thought was, "Who cares."  But then I begin to consider that if no one cared then it wouldn't be on a billboard.  The people at the resort evidently care or they would not have spent the money to put it on a billboard. Then I wondered, "Why do they care?"

I think they care because fifty-third in the world is good.  It is not best, but it is good.  In fact when one considers the number of resorts in the world it is very good.  Something does not have to be the number one best to be very good.

After digging a little deeper I found that fifty third in the world means twenty-first in the U.S., and it means first in Minnesota.  Not too bad huh?

One of my earlier posts in this blog was titled "When To Retire" posted on April 16, 2015.  In that post I wrote about a survey that indicated only about 38 percent of persons who retired in 2014 retired about when they had planned to do so.  In fact, about half of all the survey respondents answered that they retired before they planned.  Then there was the group who retired later than they planned to or who had not given any thought to when they planned to retire. "Sometimes things in our lives go per plan, but more often than not they do not.   We may plan to retire early; we may plan to retire late; we may plan to retire at sixty-five; or we may plan to not retire at all.  It is highly likely that life may push us toward an outcome different than what we planned.  But, that does not mean that life is not good anyway."

I am thinking that when we retire, we don't have to be the best of anything to have a very good retirement.  We can be way down the list.  Maybe even 53rd, and still be very good.   According to their published information Madden's resort has been in business for over eighty-five years.  What if the owners had waited to open the resort until they had a plan that would insure they would be in the top ten resorts in the world, or even in the top fifty?   If they had waited, they would probably still not be open.  I am glad I did not wait until I was the best at something before I retired.

Stories Do Not Age

One thing about being retired is that I finally make time to visit people I should have been visiting all along but thought I was too busy to visit.  And when I visit with people I have not seen in a long time the telling of stories always breaks out.

Recently, a road trip took us through Oklahoma City.  While there we took the opportunity to visit with an aunt that lives in an assisted living facility.   We visited during the time during the day when the residents meet in the activity room for coffee and donuts.  It was a happy time visiting her and others that live there. They love to have company and pretty much talk the whole time - between bites of donuts. They tell stories of long ago and then start over again with the same stories.

I just finished reading a book called  The Rent Collector.  There is a passage in that book where the author is reporting conversation between a teacher and her pupil.  The teacher is trying to teach her student the reason literature is so important to us and the teacher says, "Almost everything around us in life gets old and wears out; stories, like our very souls don't age."  Literature is important because it is full of stories and stories do not age.

Just as stories are so important when we get together with someone we haven't seen in a while, they are important other times as well.  Since the recent visit with my aunt I have been thinking about how important stories are to being successful in retirement or any stage of life:   stories we have lived, stories we have heard, stories we have read, stories we have dreamed, stories we have written.  Because as we remember the stories we already know, we realize that any stage of life well lived allows us to create a whole new set of stories.  Stories that will not age, even though we do.

 The Rent Collector, page 178

Copyright 2012 by Camron Wright

Published by Shadow Mountain Publishing

Shadowmountain.com

Published in paperbound 2013

Be the Best Post _fill in the blank_ Ever

The Best Post-Prince Ever

A few months ago CNN reported that "In a remarkable press conference marked by grace and devoid of self-pity, former President Jimmy Carter said that four spots of cancer had spread to his brain."  Mr. Carter is a Democrat and was the 39th president of the United States. Then, sometime over the holidays I heard a friend of mine who I know to be a conservative Republican say, "Isn't it a shame about Jimmy Carter."   Even though she did not agree with all of what Mr. Carter had done during his time as president, she was empathizing with his situation.  She then said something that I thought was very interesting.  She said that she believed he had been the best "post-president" ever.  I interpreted what she said as meaning he had been the best retired president.

Agreeing with what she said, another person in the room recounted that  she had once worked on a Habitat For Humanity project with President Carter and Rosalind, and how it surprised her when she was working inside one of the houses being built she looked out an unfinished window hole in the wall and realized that Rosalind was working just on the other side of the wall from her. 

Have you noticed how the ex-presidents of our country when they retire from that very stressful office seem to follow very diverse paths in retirement.  They seem to follow their individual interest and passions in life.  Some have worked on charitable endeavors.  Some have gone back to their previous occupations such as farming.  Some play golf.  Some even stay involved in politics.  John Quincy Adams actually was elected to nine terms in the U.S. House of Representative after he retired as president, and used that platform to fight slavery.

Thinking about the "post-president" thing I began to consider that retirement is the perfect chance to be the best "post something".  We have not all been president, but we have all been several things that we will not be again after retirement.  To be the best post-whatever we were before retirement will require that we follow our interests and passions in retirement and give something new our best.

A Really Good Place To Start

You Are Here

In my life since retirement I have found myself in a lot of highway rest areas.  And on some of my more ambitious days I have also found myself at a trail head for a hiking or walking trail.  A common object at both of these places is a map on which is marked a location on the map called 'You are here.”  On the map are shown possible roads or paths to take from that marked location. 

To plot a course of any kind a person must know where you will start from.  When a person retires he will find himself somewhere.  It may not be where he planned to be at retirement or it may be exactly where he thought he would be.

He may wish he could start retirement from somewhere else.  He would like to be in a different position financially, or living in a different locale, or in a different family situation, or, or, or......  But he is where he is.  He is at the "you are here" arrow on the retirement trail head map, so he must make the most of his retirement years starting from that point.

The Apostle Paul once said in a letter he wrote to some friends that he had learned to be content no matter what his circumstances were.  When he wrote that, his circumstances were not what he would have chosen for himself; but they were the circumstances he was in.  What he had learned is a hard thing to learn, and it can only be really learned by experiencing unpleasant circumstances.  But learning this concept and training ourselves in response to it is a really good start on the future whether in retirement or some other stage of life.  Our circumstances, good or not, are what they are. 

I am writing this during the holiday season between Thanksgiving and Christmas and pausing to think what I am thankful for.  Some of my thoughts are as follows:

• My circumstances include much to be thankful for.
• Being thankful whatever the circumstances makes being content much easier.
• Being content is a really good place to start in making the most of my retirement years.

At the End of the Day

Overlooking a lake just north of Houston

Some time ago I stepped out of the RV right after sundown.  It wasn't dark yet, but it was trending in that direction.  We were camped overlooking a lake just north of Houston.

A few months later I stepped out of the RV right after sundown again.  We were camped this time in a small west Texas town in a campground right on the main highway through town.  Across the highway were the typical small town businesses and the obligatory Mexican restaurant, some of which had lighted signs.  The front of the campground was bordered along the highway with a white rail fence with a marker light atop every second post.

My thought pattern was the same both times after stepping out into the early evening.

At that particular time of day, I noticed that the light conditions seemed to make my vision a little clearer.  At least I noticed things I had not noticed in the brighter light of day.  There was no glare from a sun angle.   I could see lights at a great distance.  (If you click on the picture above to enlarge it on your screen you will see those lights.)  The ambient light level was low enough so that the lights stood out in my vision, but there was still enough light to see things that were unlighted.  But this balance only lasted for a short time and then the cycle of time moved on and darkness overtook.

I began to think about how this could correlate with my life and retirement.  For most of us retirement comes at the end of one life stage and the beginning of another.  For me the analogy could be that it comes toward the sundown of my work/life day.  As we retire we may begin to notice things we never noticed before.  There are several things that might work in our favor to make that happen.

First of all we should be a little wiser than we were earlier in life.  If we are not then shame on us.  With all of the experiences we have had in our lives, we should be.

Second, the fact that we have retired should have removed a lot of the "glare" caused by things in our everyday lives of the past.  That "glare" was probably caused by the hectic schedules and stress of our jobs, raising a family, and all of the other things involved in life before retirement.

There is probably an opportunity here.  If what I am thinking is true, the question becomes, “How should I take advantage of this opportunity to notice things I have never noticed before?”  Trying to answer that question is one of the reasons I am writing this blog.  With each post I answer a small bit of that question for myself.  I hope as you read each post you enjoy following my quest.