Why I Am Never Retiring
By: Amber Carlson
Tags: Life, Wellness, Psychology, Life Lessons, Retirement

Do We Really Want to Stop Working?

To me, retirement conjures up images of cruising around in a Hawaiian shirt, shifting between knitting projects, poker tournaments with friends, and hours upon hours of daytime TV. That might be fun for a week — maybe two. But just farting around like that for fifteen to twenty years? Not my idea of a good time.

In all seriousness, though, I understand craving freedom from the daily grind — especially years and years of it. But when we finally escape the routine of working for a paycheck, what comes next?

Well, hopefully, lots of time and ample health for pursuing our hobbies. Or taking vacations to places we’ve been dying to see for years. Or visiting friends and family more often. Or doing volunteer work. You know — the kinds of things that give our lives meaning that we don’t always have enough time to do in our busy, workaday lives.

But consider also what you get from working and having an occupation. What does your career give you? Maybe it’s a sense of purpose or fulfillment — or, if the work itself isn’t anything special, you’ve probably at least made some friends or found a sense of community among the people you work with.

For the sake of argument, let’s say you work with a bunch of insufferable jerks at a job you despise. You may be literally counting the days until you’re done. But your job still lends structure to your day and provides a concrete thing for you to get up and do in the morning. That in itself can be valuable.

When you stop working, you give all of that up. Your days will be wide open, and you’ll need to create the structure that your work once gave you. The whole way of life that you’ve been used to will disappear — and it’ll take some time for you to adapt.

Having an occupation also engages and strengthens the neural networks in our brain and nervous system. There’s research showing that when we stop working, we lose many of the neural connections that we aren’t using anymore, and our cognitive functions start to deteriorate.

We might be able to slow this decline by choosing meaningful activities to replace our work — but the key is that we need to stay engaged with something, or else we start to waste away.

Other studies have shown that we are happiest when we have a few free hours each day — no more or less than that. Having too little free time can lead us down the road to burnout, but having too much free time is just as detrimental to our well-being.

Personally, I don’t see myself wanting to stop working. Admittedly, I’m lucky to be able to say that I do get purpose and fulfillment from my work. But even if I didn’t, I still think I’d want to have odd jobs as a senior citizen so that I’d have something to get out of the house and do — an outlet for my time and energy.

Or maybe I’d try my hand at a different kind of business. Maybe I’d open a little breakfast diner and serve up greasy eggs and hash browns to my patrons as I chat them up and refill their coffees. Who knows?

I don’t know what I’d do. But I wouldn’t do nothing. The thought of having nothing to do, nothing to strive for, and nowhere to be depresses me beyond words.