Rita Hayworth and Retirement Redemption

Maybe these ‘Shawshank’ spoilers will be old-age saviors

There’s a great headline in the New York Times’ Ethicist column: “My Husband Is in His 70s and Won’t Retire. Can I Make Him?”

We’ll get to their specifics in a minute, but maybe the best way to think about retirement is with this comment from Andy Dufresne in “The Shawshank Redemption,” taken incredibly out of context: “I guess it comes down to a simple choice really: Get busy living or get busy dying.”

The wife tells the Ethicist, Kwame Anthony Appiah, that she retired six months ago and hoped her husband of 50 years would leave his thankless (in her eyes) job so they could spend more time together. That sounds reasonable, but I wish we could see the last six months through her husband’s eyes. Maybe his newly retired wife scared the crap out of him because she was getting busy dying — looking bored and boring rather than seizing the joy that retirement can offer.

“Many people derive so much of their sense of worth from work that they are scared by the prospect of a life without it,” Appiah writes. “Depression is more common among retirees than among people of the same age who still work, and retirees are depressed at significantly higher rates than the overall population.”

I’ll add a huge grain of salt to that statistical mix. Lots of the depression is because of health problems and loved ones dying, not because of missing the 9-to-5 grind. Just as work looks a lot different when you’re 30 than when you’re 50, retirement looks a lot different when you’re 65 than when you’re 85.

I love retirement, but I can see how people might not, especially if they were forced out of a job or simply don’t have enough friends, hobbies or money. But others never take the time to imagine their Zihuatanejo, so they remain prisoners of inertia.

One reader’s response was particularly good: “I was that man, working often every day of the week, and having my identity defined by it. Only after I was forced to retire did I see that I was addicted to work. It was an unhealthy relationship. A truly capable person does not need a shot of stress from someone else to provide meaning in life. Retirement is indeed depressing at first, because it takes time to offset the decades of being on a daily adrenaline habit.

“I’m still busy, but I define for myself what is important and try to address those things I overlooked in my earlier decades, including my children, my physical conditioning and my wife, who tolerated my self-centered behavior for decades. Self-actualization in one’s 70s is as relevant as it is for those in their teens. A life defined by work is essentially meaningless.”

I’d substitute “misguided” for “meaningless,” and apply that to any one thing. The world has too much to offer, and so do you. You could be a great parent, for example, but you’re probably missing something if that defines your life. There’s room to do that and still be a good partner or scholar or traveler or friend.

I hope the letter-writing wife gets busy living, showing her husband how great life can be when you’re still healthy enough to enjoy it, creating adventures and embracing friendships instead of waiting for an old dog to learn new tricks.

I hope my first 2½ years of retirement are a mere fraction of my final chapter. I hope to be curious, not judgmental, and steal less from Ted Lasso and Stephen King, and more from Rudyard Kipling, filling the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds’ worth of distance run. 

I hope to decaffeinate my impatience without throttling my energy.

I hope to keep having role models who are a generation older than me — and a generation younger.

I hope I have a final sentence or two that are worth writing. And reading.

I hope.

Murphy Slaw

Something old: When a dog-loving man was getting ready to celebrate his 100th birthday, his daughter asked around the neighborhood and on Facebook for people to bring their dogs by to get petted. Hundreds did.

Something new: Pew Research Center reports that 25% of U.S. 40-year-olds have never been married — the largest segment ever. That’s up from 20% in 2010 and 6% in 1980.

Something borrowed: A Washington Post newsletter points to the usefulness of Google Lens for visual things like translating menus. It’s part of the Google app on iPhones and has an app of its own on Androids.

Something blue: Since we’re on the subject of aging gracefully — and eventually dying gracefully — here’s a grim brotherly tale from “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1.”