I retired in 2005, at the age of 70, after working as a veterinarian for twelve years in the UK and New Zealand, and teaching in universities for thirty-five years in New Zealand and Australia. Since retiring I have written several books, much poetry and several song lyrics. Books that I have self-published:

From Bondi to Bournemouth, via the South West Coast Path. 2010

Cultivate your Colon. 2011

Along two walls. Walking Offa’s Dyke and Hadrian’s Wall. 2012

Ferry Tales of sex, death and human frailty. 2012

How to retire DISgracefully. 2014

By Rock and River. Walking the Cotswold Way and Thames Path. 2014

Choir Rocks. Our community choir. 2016

Walking the Chalk, on the North and South Downs. 2016

Note: Any of the above books can be obtained by contacting me at henryhenrycollins@yahoo.com.au. There will be a small charge to cover the cost of publication and mailing it to you.

I also teach in U3A (University of the Third Age) in the areas of Critical Thinking, Creative Thinking, How to get more out of Retirement, Music for Fun, Mentoring and A Vet’s view of the Human animal (See my other blog on this topic at avetsview.co).

For me, retirement is proving to be the best time of life. Time for thinking, creativity and for exploring ideas. I would like to persuade others who are retired, or about to retire, that the possibilities are unlimited.

Time feels different depending on how old we are and what we are doing. For children, time moves slowly, especially when waiting for a special event or when bored by school. When we are adults and working to support a family there never seems enough time in the day and any holidays are soon over. But retirement demands new attitudes to time, and as previously, it can be an enemy or a friend.

If your life after retirement is too full of responsibilities and obligations, you will regret the lack of time for yourself. But if you are not involved in any creative or community activities, time drags and it is easy to fill it with routine chores such as house cleaning, washing clothes or the car, shopping, or DVDs and daytime television.

In retirement, and for possibly the first time in your life, you are in control of your time. And for most of us, there is a lot of time to manage – perhaps 20 or 30 years. When this period of life comes to an end, will you look back to see if it has been wasted? Will you ask what you did during retirement that satisfied your ambitions? How you contributed to your community, or the lives of others? In this special period of time what did you improve, learn, create, participate in and enjoy?

If the precious years seem to pass too quickly for you, and it is difficult to remember how you are using the time, try this! Why does a year have to be 12 months? Why not measure retirement in ‘blocks’ of 3 months? At the end of each block look back to see what you did, or achieved, and think what you will do to make life even more worthwhile in the next.

Retirement is your time; make it your best time.

When you are looking for a house to buy, the real estate people will tell you there are three important things to keep in mind: position, position and position. Where and how the property is situated – the district, street, the adjacent properties, which way it faces, etc, are the main determinants of its present and future value.

If you want to have a successful retirement there are also three things to keep in mind: health, health and health. And by health I mean both physical and mental well-being. Maintaining good health through regular checks, vaccinations, exercise, correct posture and a suitable diet is the essential basis for a full and active life. And challenging the brain and exercising all your senses will help prevent the mental deterioration that sometimes accompanies ageing. In the words of the old dictum: If you don’t use it, you’ll lose it!

Before retirement, the pressure of work can often interfere with taking regular exercise, visiting the doctor for annual checkups, eating well-balanced meals, and keeping a check on weight and posture. Your job may have been so draining that you had no inclination to relax with a book or take long walks; but just flop in front of the television.

Now you have retired, there are new priorities. And the most important of these is health, because without good health you will have difficulty achieving the other things you want to do.

Epiphany. A sudden revelation or insight into the nature, essence or meaning of something.

Do you know what retirement could mean for you, or are you still stuck with: Stopping work, looking after the children, and the children’s children, routine household and garden chores, obligations to your old workplace, membership of irrelevant committees, returning to the same cafes and holiday venues, cooking the same meals, reading the same newspapers, and watching the same television programs?

It’s time for your epiphany! It’s time to realise what a great life is ahead if you are prepared to let go of the old life and welcome the new. Replace the dreary word retirement with better words starting with re-, such as revive, renew, refresh, rediscover, relearn and regain your vitality and zest for life. Here are some suggestions:

• Learn to wind-surf, kite surf, scuba dive, abseil, para-glide and/or sky-dive
• Train to run marathons
• Swap your family car for a 4WD and take off into the outback
• Rent out the family home, buy a caravan and become a grey nomad
• Enrol in a course in Art, Drama, Dance, Yoga, Photography, Creative Writing, a foreign language, Exotic cookery, Singing or Public speaking.
• Play that musical instrument again. Join a choir
• Coach a student, mentor a disadvantaged youth, help an immigrant learn English, read to schoolchildren, open a Mens’ Shed
• Read the classic books and poetry you avoided at school
• Enrol for an undergraduate or higher degree
• Volunteer to help in a hospital, retirement home, library, museum, annual conference or exhibition
• Learn and volunteer in First Aid
• Join U3A (University of the Third Age). There are classes in a wide variety of subjects for a single annual fee
• Join a bush-walking club. Learn to identify plants and animals
• Start a collection – postage stamps, shells, rare books, old wood-working tools, pressed flowers
• Help others to their epiphany!

As explained previously, we can now look forward to an extended lifetime after retirement; and perhaps you have decided that you will not use it to bail out your children and their offspring, or in working part-time, accumulating more money, or in DIY repairs on your home, so what will you do?

In the earlier years you were expected to get an education, then to work to support yourself and, for most people, to raise and educate children. But, by retirement, these obligations are fulfilled. Now what will you do? There is an urgent need for a service, based on evidence from research yet to be done, to provide advice on how to live a worthwhile and fulfilling retirement. There is plenty of advice, in the form of books and talks, on how to be successful at work, to maintain relationships, and how to rear happy families, but little on what to do in retirement.

My suggestions are very basic, and you can accept or reject them as you will:

1. As in previous years, pay attention to maintaining the health of both body and mind (exercise, medical check-ups, mental challenges).

2. Look for opportunities to use your knowledge and experience (volunteering, teaching)

3. Explore those areas of interest that you had to put aside previously (education, creative hobbies)

4. Aim for a balance of personal fulfillment, community involvement and contact with family and friends

5. Maintain and increase your social contacts

Retirement is yours to live in any way you decide. It can be a time for relaxation and pleasure; for education and personal development; exploring your creativity; giving back to community; helping the disadvantaged; enhancing the environment; supporting a political philosophy; working for a charity; helping immigrants and refugees; voluntary work in a museum, library or theatre, and so on. Anything is possible: all it takes for a successful retirement is careful thought.

We all have expectations; that’s how we manage our lives. Expectations of how other people will respond; how the weather will turn out; that public transport will be on time; that the supermarket will have the goods we need, and so on. Sometimes, our expectations are not fulfilled, but we rationalise that outcome with: ‘Ah well, you can’t win them all’.

Society needs to change its expectations of older people. Previously, we were expected to retire after a lifetime’s toil, and quietly fade away. Some survived longer than others, but they were the unusual ones who had, by chance, avoided or delayed the inevitable deterioration in health associated with ageing. When asked the secret to a long life, they might have claimed ‘hard work’, ‘regular exercise’, ‘a positive outlook’ or even ‘a glass of red wine every night’.

Modern medicine has considerably increased our longevity. We can remain active and healthy well into our eighth and ninth decades. The Queen, and her successors in the future, are going to be very busy signing birthday cards for 100 year-olds!

However, the younger generations have yet to change their expectations of older people. And, in turn, we need to change our expectations of what we will do during the last quarter of life. Do you expect, for much of that time, to be, for example:

• Minding your grand- or great-grandchildren regularly, so the parents can work?
• Playing bowls, bridge, going on cruises or fishing?
• Gardening, managing finances, maintaining large homes, or refurbishing houses for your children?
• Propping up your old workplace by filling in during sick leave and vacations?
• Serving on the school committee, cooking for the sports club, managing the church accounts, etc?
• Keeping the same old routines of cooking, housework, shopping, cleaning cars, watching TV and visits to coffee shop or club?

May I respectfully suggest that because we are, for the first time ever, living for considerably longer than previously, we need to reconsider our, and their, expectations of what we will do during this valuable extra time.

What do you think?

We retirees and teenagers have a lot in common. Both generations are free of responsibility, open to opportunity and largely unburdened by the obligations and expectations of the rest of society. Like them, we are free as birds – to travel, learn a language or a musical instrument, pursue an unfulfilled interest, take up a creative hobby, eat and dress differently. We are limited only by our imagination.

The previous post discussed what could be a meaningful life after retirement, and suggested possible components other than satisfying our personal interests. Perhaps if young and older people shared their views of life, it could be of benefit to both groups. How about a Youth:Age Consortium, to bring together young people and retirees with the aim of identifying how each group could benefit the other? May I even suggest a name for the organisation: One plus Three or 1+3

This is not a facetious suggestion, there are many valuable activities by which we can contribute to youth, for example:

• Mentoring, especially disabled youths and those from dysfunctional families
• Helping to correct deficiencies in literacy and numeracy
• Teaching English/or its equivalent as a second language to young migrants
• Teaching life skills – budgeting, cooking, woodwork, driving, first aid, gardening, CPR and so on
• Introducing youths to the foundations of society – Democracy, the Law, politics, business, medical services, ethical behaviour, etc
• Encouraging participation in outdoor activities, sports and creative arts
• Assisting in youth centres and refuges

As to how young people could, and in many cases already do, support the older generation, we need to have a conversation soon. They have the idealism and the energy; we have the knowledge, experience and wisdom. Together we could build a better future.

For the first time in history, we are retiring with a quarter of a lifetime still to go. But too few decide what they will do during this long period of time. The previous three-quarters of our lives were taken up with getting an education, working, raising a family and accruing some funds for retirement. These remain traditional goals; but society has yet to decide what would be reasonable goals for retirees with many years ahead of them.

Unless this question is addressed, youngsters will continue to expect us to fade into the background without any fuss; the medical profession will resent having to spend time and energy keeping us healthy, and governments will increasingly complain about how much it costs to support older citizens.

We know that older retired people already contribute to society through child-minding, assisting in aged care, delivering meals-on-wheels, working for charities, as guides in museums and art galleries, and many other volunteer roles. These activities are largely overlooked and, therefore, unappreciated by the rest of the population. The present economic contribution of retired people to society has yet to be calculated. Perhaps if we charged for our services they would sit up and take notice!

However, the population of retired citizens is an expanding and largely untapped resource. We have the knowledge, experience and wisdom which have yet to be acquired by the younger generations, while we remain overlooked and undervalued.

I suggest that we need to address this issue, because no one else is interested or motivated to do so. Here are some important questions:

• What constitutes a meaningful life after retirement? What proportions of our time and energy could and, perhaps should, be allocated to our personal interests, to our families, to our communities and, perhaps, the nation and the rest of the world?
• What volunteer and part-time paid activities, other than those of which we are already aware, could we undertake?
• How could governments assist in creating new opportunities for us to contribute, and provide the  necessary training and support?
• How could the present and future contributions of older generations be brought to public attention and acknowledged?

What do you think?

Have you looked at birthday cards appropriate to your age? Make a visit to your local newsagent and see what is offered. Why is this necessary you ask? Well, my 80th is coming up fast and I wanted to know what sort of stuff would be coming my way. In the shops I checked, there were several cards for 70 year-olds, fewer for 80-year-olds, a couple for those who have reached 90 years and perhaps one for centenarians. So the first expectation of card manufacturers and newsagents is that we will nearly all be gone by 100 years. This expectation is out of date as I pointed out in one of my first posts – we are all living longer and most can expect 20, 30 or more years after retirement.

This outdated expectation is backed up by the messages in the cards. They are mostly about Congratulations you’ve made it this far, and We hope you have a good day (at least one). I have yet to see one that actually says: ‘Are you still here?‘, but that is what is implied. And why all the reverence? Does being older result in loss of a sense of humour?

Interestingly, there are no cards for the years between the later decades. Perhaps we are expected to remain out of sight and out of mind until the next big event!

Birthday cards for the young contain good wishes for the future. We mature oldies also have a future, it is exciting, and we would like others to anticipate and celebrate it, rather than dwell on the past. NOstalgia gets you NOwhere.

I also want to challenge the language of those who have yet to face the reality of ageing. Here are some of the expressions and my response:

• ‘He’s (she’s) good for his (her) age‘   How would you know? Change your expectations
• ‘This (a birthday) is a milestone’  Which implies a journey, which implies an end, which is….
• ‘He’s/she’s on the ball’  Why not? Aren’t you?
• ‘He hasn’t lost his marbles‘  Whatever they are. Why would he? Where are yours?
• ‘Hale and hearty’  Unnecessary repetition
• ‘Chipper’  The expression is supposed to be derived from ‘kipper’ – a dead, preserved, odoriferous fish
• ‘He’s/she’s very spry’  Compared with what? A dead horse?
• ‘This is a day to celebrate’  Why? Because he/she is still here?
• My favourite: ‘He’s old… but he’s very clean!’  From that wonderful old show Steptoe and Son.

There, I feel much better having got that off my chest! I am sure you have also been the target of other irritating expressions. Why not share them with us.

An increasing percentage of the population are retired and living longer. Governments are concerned that, in the future, there will be an overwhelming demand on their funds to pay the pensions and a decreasing number of younger tax payers to provide the revenue. The simple answer, they propose, is for workers to work longer – thereby putting off the need to pay them a pension.

However, workers do not usually retire because they have reached pension age, but because they are tired of working. Many are physically or mentally exhausted and looking forward to a rest. Some may want to continue working, but that should be their choice. An enforced extension of working life may help solve the financial dilemma, but it will also increase the pressure on our medical services to keep workers fit to work.

An alternative strategy would be for Governments to learn how retired people already contribute to the nation and economy, and then put in place arrangements to support, encourage and enhance their contribution. This will be explored in a future post.