the importance of parachutes

A successful transition to retirement entails a drastic change in one’s thinking...all of a sudden the goal posts have been moved radically....the rule book has been re-written...all bets are off......the brain has to be rewired...entire thinking software systems have to be updated, & perhaps some mental hard-drives have to be replaced...radical stuff......

The passing-thru of life-stages up until this point have been progressive. Retirement often entails a sudden, abrupt, brutal reality check. One of the most difficult aspects of this new deal is that you are on your own.....crowds of relatives, chums,and hangers-on attended and celebrated with you on your 21st birthday, your wedding, funerals, promotions, birthdays, and Christmases.

This time you are doing it alone No-one cares. It’s like pissing in black pants - you know something has happened, but no-one else notices.

Overnight the phone stops, the emails stop, no-one comes to the door. You are likely to find yourself excluded from all the activities and networks you relied upon in your work incarnation. In the words of Ken Kesey - you got off the bus. Many people are pushed off the bus. In the middle of nowhere. Without you the bus continues on in a cloud of dust - rocking with music, as empty bottles, condoms, and roach ends fly from the windows. No-one looks back. It as if you are left standing there in the middle of a featureless, unfamiliar desert with no map, food, no water, no possessions and no direction.

What complicates this issue is that fact that a lifetime of work has conditioned most of us into certain ways of thinking...our working lives are largely structured around routines. These structures suddenly disappear overnight. We are left rudderless, directionless, purposeless.

In the words of a Sufi sage: “Our lives begin in institutions where others have gone before. Eventually we encounter the trackless wastes. At this point we must become our own scout”.

Change your thinking and you change your world.

Remember: the mind is like a parachute - it only works when its open!!