When it comes to chapters, they can be deeply personal in our lives, and we might imbue them with a great deal of meaning, according to the emotional experience we have had within them.
As I leave behind the world of work, and begin the new life (6 months in so far) of retirement, I find that I am joining a huge club that means different things to different people in the same position. And the experiences vary widely between those who have acquired a great deal of wealth, and take time to go around spending as much time as possible spending as much of it as they can before meeting life’s end.
Then there are those of us who are at the completely opposite end of that scale, juggling the finances as we have done for most of our lives. Many of us are essentially worn-out and suffering from a number of health problems, so we have to figure out how to make the most of our lives from day to day. Some will spend much of the time watching TV, maybe meeting-up for coffee with the occasional friend, doing the housework as best as can be managed. Whilst I am like that to some degree, I am also looking for some intellectual stimulation, and I find it in reading, writing and learning. And I know that there are many of us who live that life….there are a few with me on my university course.
My feeling is that whilst in common with others, thinking about mortality is a new activity, and it is certainly true that much has slowed down, and nearly everything physical is harder to do, but do is what we must, from my perspective, even if it takes us a whole day to do just one thing. As soon as we stop with the doing, we sit down, and we don’t get back up again.
We are not the biggest users of technology, but I go around advocating that technology is our friend, not our enemy. Eyesight going? Increase the text size on your screen. Arthritis in your fingers? Use voice to dictate your letters and emails, smart speakers to provide a weather forecast, tell the time, provide instant information, including that word you can no longer remember. Hearing going? Turn the subtitles on in your YouTube videos. Don’t know how to build a website? Do all your writing on Medium. Find chat forums for older people, or interest groups for the weird hobbies we have taken-up. Go on Zoom to meet-up with your housebound pals. Of course, others are climbing mountains and running marathons, too, some returning to work, or engaging with the voluntary sector.
For myself, I get picked-up to go shopping and taken to the cinema. I pay for the tickets, whilst others provide the transport. And we get to go on the cheap days when everyone else is working. Occasionally I make it out to the art exhibitions that are constantly changing, and I sit down in front of the art and if I am lucky, I am inspired by the art to create some writing.
Thus, I find myself writing about the continuation of a chapter (Six months in…Did I say that already?). I recognise that I might have only 5 minutes to live, or could be alive for decades, but that has been the case for the whole of my life. So far, that hasn’t changed. I intend to make the most of it, planning for 30 years, rather than 5 minutes.
Since there is enough free or cheap learning out there to last me 1000 lifetimes, in my opinion, 30 years seems quite miniscule in comparison. And with new learning comes new perspectives, and how much we can learn from the next generation, opening up new landscapes in thinking about sexuality and gender identification, slowly pushing for more action on global warming and creating the beginnings of the AI revolution, new ways of being human, whilst learning to live alongside and in partnership with new machines and software, with concomitant changes in our behaviours.
I have thoroughly enjoyed living out the realities brought to us as a reality of the digital revolution, such as being sat here writing online as music is streamed to my Bluetooth headphones.
Like many others, I have had my fair share of challenges in life, but I still embrace it, waking-up every morning, still glad to be alive, and I will still continue on with this final chapter as long as possible.
Fraser
January 2025