Be Grateful in Retirement

Be grateful in retirement.  You worked all your life to get here.  Learn to appreciate it.  You saved for years to get to this point in your life.  Learn to be grateful for this gift of time that so many people don’t get to appreciate.  You have the freedom to do whatever you want, whenever you want, and the only limitations are the ones you place on this wonderful stage of your life.  If you do nothing else, learn to be grateful for retirement.

This website was started as a response to all the people I met who said they were bored in retirement.  It was almost a knife in the heart to me because I had been anticipating this period of my life for so many years.  I couldn’t believe someone could be anything but ecstatic upon reaching this milestone.  For the purposes of our present conversation, let me put the arguments against boredom aside.  While it is true that I struggle with how anyone could be bored in life at all, I am even further stressed when I hear that upon being freed from the burdens and responsibilities of employment that anyone would have the slightest bit of trouble about how to spend their day.  You’re reading the words of someone who daydreamed their way through useless meetings and conference calls and took part in enough boring presentations to provide lifetime relief to any insomniac who ever walked the earth.  I cannot believe anyone could be bored in retirement after all the hours ennui that I experienced during my working years.  But that’s not the point here.  Because if you’re complaining about boredom in retirement, you’re ignoring what a gift retirement is in the first place.  It is the gift of time and a reward for all of the years that you invested to get to this point in your life.  If you learn nothing else in life, you should take a moment to understand how grateful you should be for this time of intellectual freedom and curiosity and the unlimited opportunity that you’ve been given to enjoy life to the fullest.  We have this standard of living because of the people who came before us.  The great philosophers and scientists over the past two thousand years were geniuses.  The architecture of ancient Egypt and Greece and Rome make some of our work look rather lame.  The study of world history, it it's presented well, is something that keeps you wanting to know more.

Be grateful in retirement.  Take the time to look at the obituaries now and then to understand how many people don’t make it this far in life.  Look around and list all of the friends and relatives who are no longer present in your life.  How many were younger than you when they died?  That should start to bring an awareness into your life for what you’ve been given.  Do you know how many people would have liked to have lived for as long as you already have?  When you read about children dying or countries torn apart by natural disasters and war, you should take the time to be thankful for the longevity that you’ve been given.  Be grateful in retirement.  Those who have lived long enough to get to this point in life have been given more than they realize.

Be grateful in retirement and try to live every day to the fullest.

Whenever you receive a gift of this magnitude it’s only appropriate to give thanks.  Anyone fortunate enough to reach retirement age should feel an obligation to make the most of it and find a way to give back.  Make it a habit to be grateful for retirement and this will be as natural as breathing.  Be grateful by living life to the fullest and give back by showing others how to do the same thing.  Be a retirement ambassador.  Be someone who talks about the possibilities that retirement provides rather than all the negatives that we hear about so often.  Yes, getting older isn’t easy and health problems can be difficult.  Learn to focus on the positives.  Learn to focus on all the freedom retirement gives you.  Learn to take advantage of all the opportunities retirement provides as well.  This can be a magnificent time in your life.  There is no reason that your retirement years can’t be the happiest time of your life.  You have faced all of life’s struggles and you have survived.  Celebrate that fact.  Be grateful for retirement.  Don’t have regrets – turn them into opportunities.  Don’t shut out any chance to make someone else’s life a little bit better.  The happiness those actions will bring you will be absolutely amazing.  Be the person who changes the world for the better and the changes those actions bring into your own life will amaze you.  Learn to be grateful in retirement and you’ll be amazed at how wonderful this stage in your life can be.  It’s time to go out and change the world.  It’s time to Enjoy Retired Life!

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