Living a Normal Life

Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for—in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it. ~Ellen DeGeneres

That quote would have been a very accurate verbal snapshot of my “normal” life before mid-June, when I began retirement. Some of you who know me well may suspect that I’m not the retiring kind. However, let me assure you that I am doing my best to change that perception. After so many years of going off to work daily, there are new habits to be learned and some old ones to extinguish.

Retirement . . . is when you stop living at work and begin working at living.   ~Anonymous

Is it possible that one has to work at living? I think it is. For a lot of years, I was so bogged down in the daily-ness of a job that wasn’t very fulfilling emotionally. It exhausted me to keep up the hype and the masks that go along with being a “good employee”. Believe me, daily forced hype and wearing masks are not good habits. It got to the point that my life consisted of getting up, going to work, working, coming home exhausted, doing a few things around the house, going to bed, getting up…pure drudgery. My life was all out of sync. No time for much that was healthy, fulfilling or pleasurable. I do not define that as living at all, but merely existing. For those of you who have great jobs that you love and still manage to live a quality life outside of that job, I salute you. I envy you the balance in your life. Clearly, however, it was time for me to make some changes.

Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.  ~Robert Louis Stevenson

It won’t be easy. We’ve lived a long time with two full incomes. There will be substantial savings on my part in clothes, transportation, gas, etc.  And, we’ll be doing much less eating out–and hopefully banishing most prepared processed food. Still, we’ll be counting pennies, and yet I expect big dividends too. If I can learn to really use my time–writing, reading, editing, running a loving calm healthy household–it will be worth whatever it takes. I need to leave the Type-A compulsions behind me, and recognize as valuable the contributions I’ll be making now. It’s time to start really living.

Life is the only thing worth living for. ~Zen proverb

For me, living life to its fullest means slowing down, being able to make choices about how I spend my time, being able to have time to do for others, lavishing extra time and love on my family, working on the vocation of my choice (not necessarily for money), being more aware of the natural world around me, being able to study and learn whatever subject interests me, using my hands and my mind to create something of lasting beauty, taking time to really listen to my body and to care for it, being able to reach out a hand to a friend in need, being at peace at the end of the day, being at peace in the moment, every moment.

Good for the body is the work of the body, and good for the soul is the work of the soul, and good for either is the work of the other.  ~Henry David Thoreau

Those may sound like lofty goals, idealistic yearnings, but there it is. I want that balance of which Thoreau spoke. I have no intention of not “working”. I will always find ways to engage my hands and my mind and my soul and my heart. That’s my new normal. I still have a lot to learn and a lot to accomplish in this life. I have places that I want to visit, ideas that I want to make flourish, people that I want to love by being there for them. This is not an idle time in my life. My prayer is that it will be the most productive time of my life. I retired from a job, not from life. Living is my job now.

Here is the test to find whether your mission on earth is finished.  If you’re alive, it isn’t.  ~Richard Bach

When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, “I used everything you gave me.”  ~Erma Bombeck