This is a snippet of an interaction that happened to me while I was on an Alaskan Cruise. Maybe in a future post I will put more detail around this trip but for now, as I try to get my head back in the game that we call “Real Life” I will share this little moment with you.
This morning as I selected my breakfast at the buffet I apologised to the person standing next to me for taking too much time and making him wait. He responded in a very unexpected way,
“You are on holiday, you have all the time in the world.”
His words were obvious of course. We are on an expedition cruise along the coast of Alaska. There is no need to be anywhere really. Maybe in the lecture hall to learn about the adaptations of pinnipeds (seals for the non-science nerds) or in the observation lounge to marvel at the furs and the clothing made from them by the native culture advisor. But the lecture will be recorded and can be played back on the screen in your bedroom. The furs, and their owner, will be around and she is only too happy to share her story with people willing to listen. The days have slid by peppered with amazing food, meeting interesting people and excursions to breathtaking, inspiring places. There is really no need to rush. His next statement was one of those moments when your world turns on a dime as the sound of pennies dropping fills your mind.
“We spend our lives obsessing about appointments and schedules. It is unhealthy.”
He is right. In that moment I stopped and considered the amazing spread of food in front of me. I allowed myself to listen to my body and selected what I needed to eat in that moment. I asked him,
“Are you retired?”
He chucked, “Of course not! I would go out of my mind if I was.”
Another surprising answer but also one that seemed obvious at least to me. I am not ready to retire. But at the same time I firmly believe that working full time is sucking the life out of me. I wrote in an earlier post about tossing up the factors of work-life balance. This conversation added another perspective. In my thinking about my work life balance I have been focussed on the things working is preventing me from doing. I had the very strong sense that I needed to have a list of things to do to fill the time that would open up before me to justify not working. But the words of my companion indicated that his is not the case.
The thing that stood out from this conversation is that to be happy in this life you sometimes need to stop and smell the flowers. Or look at the scenery, or listen to the glacier. Wild animals and plants are not overly concerned about what time it is and if they are going to be on time for their appointment. They are not concerned about what some high status individual said on the TV last night. They are concerned about what is happening to them right here, right now. Where they are going to find their breakfast today and what the weather is doing today. They are connected to the natural rhythms of the world and they live their life accordingly.
We can learn a lot from them.
I took this shot as we relaxed in the spa following our final glacier excursion of our expedition. In the background are people enjoying seafood chowder and further in the background the Chugach mountains with the smaller Bryn Glacier emptying into College Fjord of Prince William Sound. Getting to experience these retreating wonders was an experience I will not forget.
Corrupting Mrs Jones 
Yes, dear Lord, that moment when you realize that what you have to do is getting in the way of the other things you have to do, to stop to smell the roses while drinking coffee and not caring how long you’re there doing it.
I was on a cruise of the Hawaiian Islands, standing on the aft side of our deck and staring at the night sky and the endless ocean while looking in the direction we had come from… and I not only wondered why I’d never done this before now, I realized that one of the things that had prevented me was… working. I needed this cruise badly and I felt irresponsible for taking off two weeks to go cruising with my lover.
I’d thought more about retirement on that cruise and the math said I had a few more years before I could do it but, in that moment, standing where I was and gazing at a starlit sky, I was stopping to smell roses and to drink coffee and forget everything at home including my job that was wearing me down. I finished drinking the cup of coffee I really did have, went back to the cabin, and made love to my lover who had asked me if anything was wrong and if I was okay.
“I am now,” I said as I took her into my arms. I was on my way to being retired and I was looking forward to it so that I could have more moments like the ones I was having aboard a cruise ship…
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There were times during our recent wandering that I actively chose not to have a camera in my hand. The reason? I just wanted to be in that moment.
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Sometimes, that’s exactly what retirement is about: Being in that moment even if, in that moment, you’re doing absolutely nothing. The business of keeping your home running will be what it is but now is the time for you to catch up on those moments that having a career doesn’t always allow you to have.
My last day at work, at the end of that day, felt like a huge weight had been lifted from me. I didn’t think, “Now what?” or anything like that; I wiped my work computers back to their defaults, put them in their bag and… went to screw my poly wife’s brains out for the rest of the day.
As I was stripping her naked, she asked, “What are you doing?”
“Being in the moment,” I said.
I did apply for the job that I actually got – but my stroke prevented me from taking it. I didn’t need to work but applied for it… just for the fun of it and to see if they thought I had what it took to run their whole department. Would have I have taken the job had I not had the stroke? Hell, yeah – because it wasn’t the job I’d retired from.
But fate decided otherwise and gave me more time to be in only those moments, one moment at a time, one day at a time. It’ll be interesting to see what you decide to do!
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