> > > On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 1:17 PM, Shyam Sunder <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> Retirement is when you leave your last job. > > Shyam who thought this was about Silk Smita!! Welcome to Silk.
I am sure many in Silk have read this provocative article. http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/09/why-i-hope-to-die-at-75/379329/ Something he says here relates to what you said about leaving the last job. "Many of us have suppressed, actively or passively, thinking about God, heaven and hell, and whether we return to the worms. We are agnostics or atheists, or just don’t think about whether there is a God and why she should care at all about mere mortals. We also avoid constantly thinking about the purpose of our lives and the mark we will leave. Is making money, chasing the dream, all worth it? Indeed, most of us have found a way to live our lives comfortably without acknowledging, much less answering, these big questions on a regular basis. We have gotten into a productive routine that helps us ignore them. And I don’t purport to have the answers. But 75 defines a clear point in time: for me, 2032. It removes the fuzziness of trying to live as long as possible. Its specificity forces us to think about the end of our lives and engage with the deepest existential questions and ponder what we want to leave our children and grandchildren, our community, our fellow Americans, the world.” Retirement as sanyas: to ponder, meditate, read, and make peace with your place in the world. Retirement as self-cultivation?? My disagreement with what you said earlier is about whether family will want to spend time with you. Seems to me that all the elders we know spend a lot of time with only family.
