Retirement
One of my favorite sayings that I like to share with other people is that “a good chess player thinks one or two moves ahead of the game.” It helps to think that life is a game, if for no other reason than it gives me a feeling of control. The trick to winning the game is to stay flexible and to let my options play out. After all, I cannot play my hand until all of the cards have been dealt.
Another hint to winning is to not let any opportunity go unexploited; but also, don’t let any tragedy go unexploited. When the game of life is finally over, and I have taken advantage of opportunities as they arise, and have avoid the pitfalls; then I can say that I have won the game. “Don’t hate the player; hate the game,” is another saying that I like to use. I have been lucky and I know it. If I had a role in my good fortune it was to pick the right woman to be my wife and to have raised three children whose company I truly enjoy. Everything else has been left to chance.
For the average American, the quotient of happiness declines in their 30s and 40s, and bottoms out in their early 50s. Then happiness begins to creep up again in the mid-50s, probably because the average American retires at 61 and is looking forward to not working. Happiness coasts along through the early 70s, but after the age of 75, the rates of depression and suicide begin to climb. This is due to the loss of ability, failing health, and strained finances. My hope is to live as long and as well as possible and then have a quick, but glorious, death.
All of us have regrets at the degree that went unpursued, the career that went unpursued, or the company not started. My hope is that I can beat the odds, as I have never been saddled with success, so I have no heights to fall from. Ernest Hemmingway, after a remarkable life, shot himself when he was 61, probably because he knew that he had once been a great writer and couldn’t live with watching his skills decline. My professional career was below average, at best, so I am not walking away from power, fame, money, or status. I am no Hemmingway; I was a history teacher and now I am a substitute teacher. It is that simple.
Yet, I have won the game of life. I did it by avoiding the roadblocks of divorce, debt, gambling, and drugs. My marriage dividend includes living in a wonderful condominium and having a nice car to drive. I have it made and I know it. It is time to take stock, appreciate what I have, and build upon my success. I will not be satisfied with merely running out the clock because I intend to send the game into overtime. My career may be over, and my children may be on their own, but that is no reason to waste the extra innings that have been to given me. My plan is to work on kaizen, or continuous self-improvement, and to travel. There are no other goals than to keep the good going. I want to finish writing my novel, to read the Bible, and to read history for the fun of it. The satisfaction that I need to have a fulfilling life can come from reading, updating my blog, and staying fit. There are so many pitfalls that I can still fall into, especially financial pitfalls, that I still need to concentrate on running a tight ship.
I want to retire beloved, fulfilled, and respected. The game is only over after I have died and, by then, I won’t care about how I am remembered as long as I have lived a good life. Until that time comes, I will devote myself to peace, spiritualism, and wisdom. The real trick will be to learn how to love myself and, hopefully, I have the time and the resources to figure out how to do that.
Mike Tyson
Mike Tyson once said, “Everyone has a plan until he gets punched in the mouth.” Well, I got punched in the mouth on Saturday by biking 106 miles in 100-degree temperatures. I thought that I could finish the ride before the heat set in. I was wrong. All of the signs were there for me to not make the ride that day, but I didn’t pay attention. The heat and humidity had been predicted well in advance. On the day before the ride, I had jogged nine miles and had no recovered from my run. Diarrhea had plagued me the morning of the ride but I still chose to get on the bike. My thought was that if I am going to do the Ironman in October then I have to prove how tough I am by riding the course whether I felt well or not. If I waited for the conditions to be perfect then I could never train outside. It is that bull-headedness, that stubbornness, which has kept me in the race for eleven seasons, but also almost caused me to collapse from heat stroke.
I still had 35 miles to go, and was the furthest distance from my home, when I could feel myself weaken and had to stop and take half hour breaks. Dehydration was my enemy so, after I had drained my water bottle, I had to fill it up again at a gas station and then again at a flower shop. It didn’t seem to matter that I kept myself hydrated because it was so hot that every time that I exerted myself, I felt faint. My heart was racing in the mid-day sun so the best that I could do was to slug it out until I got home. When I still had 20 miles to go my nose began to bleed, something that it had never done before, and once the spigot opened I could not get it to stop. An image of myself, that I do not like to recall, is me on my hands and knees, struggling to get off of the ground after stopping for a rest, clearly distressed with a stream of blood dried out below my nose, and yet determined to get back on the bike to finish what I had started.
The lesson that I learned that day is to pay attention to the signs that it is too hot to get on the bike. I am not proud of this ride but I do feel like I have suffered in my preparations for the Ironman this year; I feel like I have earned my place at the starting line. By the end of my ride, my voice was a couple of octaves higher and it had become raspy after breathing in the hot air for so long. Further, my eyes were dark and hollow, giving my face a half-crazed look. When the ride was finally over and I looked at myself in the mirror, I saw that my eyes had sunk back into their sockets, and they felt like they would melt down my cheeks. My face remained flush because of the near miss with heat stroke. Peering unsympathetically at myself in the mirror, I looked and felt ten years older than I was when I began the ride and, once again, I asked myself why on earth I would do this to myself. My brain could not come up with a satisfactory reply.
Chris Spencer
I first met Chris Spencer while I was attending Bellarmine University. His parents owned Spencer Gifts and, even back during our college days, Chris was one the nicest guys that you could ever hope to meet. For example, one time, while commuting to college after a snow storm, my car slid off the street. Chris owned a Jeep and, without even being asked, he hitched up a tow cable to my car and pulled me out of the ditch that I had driven into. Much later in life, I taught both of his daughters when they attended the high school that I work at, and I also saw him periodically through the years. Chris competes in the Ironman Triathlon and his finish time qualified him for the national championship in Kona, Hawaii. His best time was ten hours and ten minutes and his goal was to finish the 140-mile race in less than ten hours. However, he suffered a career ending injury when he was thrown from his bicycle while crossing some railroad tracks. This injury occurred shortly after he separated his shoulder after hitting a curb so Chris decided to call it a career and put his bike in storage.
Shortly after Christmas, Chris was working the cash register at his store when suddenly he felt faint. After crumbling to the ground and blacking out, his daughter found him unconscious on the floor and she called 911 for an ambulance. There was a blockage in his carotid artery which caused him to lose consciousness and the emergency room doctor tried five times to find the problem. He snaked a tube from the femoral artery in Chris’ leg all of the way up to the carotid artery in his neck but wasn’t having any luck with finding the blockage. The doctor turned to the nurse and said, remorsefully, “let him die in peace on the table.” But then, in a moment of inspiration, the doctor decided to give it one more try, and found the blockage that was so small that it barely registered on the scope.
Chris had been intubated for the surgery. When he woke up in his hospital bed he found himself surrounded by his wife and daughters. He wanted to tell then that he was alright but he couldn’t talk with a tube down his throat. In time the tube was removed and he could tell his family how much he loved them. And he could count his blessings. After enduring months of occupational and speech therapy, Chris had fully recovered to the point that I couldn’t tell that he had been sick. He was as big and strong as he had always been and had lost none of his natural friendliness. He is left with a good story that is worth retelling because it stands as a warning to me to not take the good life that I had built for myself for granted.
Retirement
One of my favorite sayings that I like to share with other people is that “a good chess player thinks one or two moves ahead of the game.” It helps to think that life is a game, if for no other reason than it gives me a feeling of control. The trick to winning the game is to stay flexible and to let my options play out. After all, “I cannot play my hand until all of the cards have been dealt.”
Another hint to winning is to not let any opportunity go unexploited; but also, don’t let any tragedy go unexploited. When the game of life is finally over, and I have taken advantage of opportunities as they arise, and have avoid the pitfalls; then I can say that I have won the game. “Don’t hate the player; hate the game,” is another saying that I like to use. I have been lucky and I know it. If I had a role in my good fortune it was to pick the right woman to be my wife and to have raised three children whose company I truly enjoy. Everything else has been left to chance.
For the average American, the quotient of happiness declines in their 30s and 40s, and bottoms out in their early 50s. Then happiness begins to creep up again in the mid-50s, probably because the average American retires at 61 and is looking forward to not working. Happiness coasts along through the early 70s, but after the age of 75, the rates of depression and suicide begin to climb. This is due to the loss of ability, failing health, and strained finances. My hope is to live as long and as well as possible and then have a quick, but glorious, death.
All of us have regrets at the degree that went unpursued, the career that dried up, or the company not started. My hope is that I can beat the odds. I have never been saddled with success, so I have no heights to fall from. Ernest Hemmingway, after a remarkable life, shot himself when he was 61, probably because he knew that he had once been a great writer and couldn’t live with watching his skills decline. My professional career was below average, at best, so I am not walking away from power, fame, money, or status. I am no Hemmingway; I was a history teacher and now I am a substitute teacher. It is that simple.
Yet, I have won the game of life. I did it by avoiding the roadblocks of divorce, debt, gambling, and drugs. My marriage dividend includes living in a wonderful condominium and having a nice car to drive. I have it made and I know it. It is time to take stock, appreciate what I have, and build upon my success. I will not be satisfied with merely running out the clock because I intend to send the game into overtime. My career may be over, and my children may be on their own, but that is no reason to waste the extra innings that have been to given me. My plan is to work on kaizen, or continuous self-improvement, and to travel. There are no other goals than to keep the good going. I want to finish writing my novel, to read the Bible, and to read history for the fun of it. The satisfaction that I need to have a fulfilling life can come from reading, updating my blog, and staying fit. There are so many pitfalls that I can still fall into, especially financial pitfalls, that I still need to concentrate on running a tight ship.
I want to retire beloved, fulfilled, and respected. The game is only over after I have died and, by then, I won’t care about how I am remembered as long as I have lived a good life. Until that time comes, I will devote myself to peace, spiritualism, and wisdom. The real trick will be to learn how to love myself and, hopefully, I have the time and the resources to figure out how to do that.
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