Retirement is about starting anew, not quitting

Q: I know that there are emotional stages and transitions for major life events. Would you be able to recommend some books that address phases, emotional pitfalls and coping strategies for surviving them when one is nearing retirement? -- P., Las Vegas

A: Are you Brett Favre writing to me under a pseudonym? Because, if you are ...

Brett, I love you. I miss you. I'm sorry this is hard. I know it's hard. I know you're bored out of your mind and feeling lost. So farm. Hunt. Coach a Pop Warner team. Learn ballroom dancing. Write a newspaper columnist for advice. But stop distracting Aaron Rodgers and my beloved Packers. And, swear to God, if you don a Minnesota Vikings uniform, I will boo. Loudly. And your name will never be mentioned in this house again.

Sorry, I forgot where I was there for a minute.

I think the first thing we have to notice about retirement is that it doesn't exist. I mean that it's an artificial concept drawn from a whimsical cultural prejudice. To wit: Participating in the economy by making money is the ground of being and identity, and an inherently more important and meaningful way to live than not participating. There are three ways not to participate: be disabled, be a vagrant or retire.

Our unthinking embrace of the prejudice means we struggle psychologically to "re-ground" our identity if we retire. To become acquainted with a new way of being. And so now my industry (behavioral health) sells books and gives lectures about how to cope. How to do that.

But, all I'm saying is, try explaining this "suffering" to an elder in a hunter/gatherer society. I think you'll get a curious stare. The idea that someone could ever "earn the right" to stop participating in the daily care of the village, or that a village would ever "downsize" older villagers to make room for youngsters ... well, it's just another thing about being a modern in Western civilization that makes me feel silly.

I'm getting to your question, but let me get this off my chest: Our economy is hostile to the young and the old. It deliberately and artificially delays the meaningful participation of adolescents, and it is set up to discard the experienced -- and too expensive -- elder.

OK, three books to recommend. Readers, if you have other trusted resources, fire away ...

* Gail Sheehy's 1976 book "Passages" still holds up more than 30 years later. She was the first in modern psychology to observe and describe adult stages of development. And I highly recommend you stop thinking of retirement as a "thing" and start thinking more about moving through an important and potentially beautiful stage of your own development.

* Read anything by Nancy K. Schlossberg. Schlossberg says that there are multiple healthy ways to navigate retirement, and has fascinating metaphorical names for six of those: Continuers, Adventurers, Searchers, Easy Gliders, Involved Spectators and Retreaters.

* Lastly is a cool little paperback called "The Psychology of Retirement: How to Cope Successfully with a Major Life Transition," which is part of The Everyday Psychology Series published by the Business Psychology Research Institute.

Don't "retire," P. Change jobs. Shift your vocation, say, to grandparenting, or mentoring, or time for depth work and development of your spiritual practice, or volunteering, or learning an instrument, or enrolling in a college course in French cooking, or embark intentionally in an entirely new chapter in your marriage.

See, no one will give you money in exchange for these vocations. So it's your job to decide for yourself that it's meaningful to participate -- not in the economy, sheesh -- but in the circle of life.

No one ever earns the right to stop contributing. To stop generating. To coast. In a moral society, it would be impossible even to think in those terms.

If anybody ever had the right -- and the money -- to coast, do nothing, and whine about it (not saying you're whining, P), it was Superman. Christopher Reeve fell off a horse and became a quadriplegic. He didn't retire. He shifted vocations, and spent his new life as an advocate for victims of paralysis and medical research. That's when Reeve became a superhero. For real.

P., all significant life changes call for shifts and develop of identity. And shifts in identity are often accompanied by grief, episodic depression, restlessness and anxiety. I urge folks to think of these discomforts less as random torment and more as nature's strategy for "giving birth."

You're being born, P.

Steven Kalas is a behavioral health consultant and counselor at Clear View Counseling Wellness Center in Las Vegas and the author of "Human Matters: Wise and Witty Counsel on Relationships, Parenting, Grief and Doing the Right Thing" (Stephens Press). His columns appear on Tuesdays and Sundays. Questions for the Asking Human Matters column or comments can be e-mailed to skalas@reviewjournal.com.