The Rest of Your Life

I have a friend I’ve known for more than sixty years. During the summer months, we lunch at the Monument Park in Saint Paul. We’ve kept our bond of friendship strong since first meeting at our respective first jobs out of college. Now in his retirement, my friend has chosen to spend a lot of his time in caregiving members of his religious community.

We don’t talk about it a lot but he is comforted in knowing that he’s making a real difference in his patient’s lives. There’s a strong religious component to the care but it’s never pronounced nor a banner in his relationship with his patients. He does it because it is the right thing for him to do and it brings a comforting presence to his patient’s lives.

My friend’s devotion to others got me to thinking about how other folks I know, now also in their retirement years, have chosen to spend the rest of their lives. I’ve often complained about the ‘old men at the coffee shop.’ These are the retirees whose lives have descended into gathering each morning at the old watering hole simply to complain about life in general. Most communities have a McDonalds where the disenfranchised gather each morning. Their rhetoric is usually the same. It’s a steady stream of grousing about local and national politics, other nationalities, young people, employers,

Fortunately, there’s another group of folks who have chosen to be more productive in their remaining years here on the planet. Whatever their profession in their other life, they have now gone in another direction which brings them newfound satisfaction.

There’s an old girlfriend of mine who has traveled the world and continues skipping around the globe with her husband. Several other women I know have embraced their passion for the arts; painting, acting, and other creative/theatrical ventures. Another couple decided early on to have a major presence in their grandchildren’s lives and have done just that. Another fellow at 89 years young is still doing taxes and loving it.

Richard J. Leider in his book ‘Power of Purpose’ talks about what researchers are discovering about how an increased sense of purpose can improve our health, healing, happiness, longevity, and productivity. The book has a definite spiritual bent about it. But Leider, without apology, sees this as an important component in his approach to life-satisfying ventures.

Leider goes on to explain that ‘Purpose is an active expression of our values and our compassion for others-it makes us want to get up in the morning and add value to the world.’ His book, details a graceful, practical, and ultimately spiritual process for making it central to your life.

With or without a spiritual angle, finding purpose for the rest of your life is certainly a worthwhile venture in living. I found mine almost by accident. While easing out of my business ventures, I encountered an irascible jerk who pushed me to the limit. I’d had enough and decided to close up shop. That left me with the next big challenge. What to do with the rest of my life? Retirement wasn’t an option. So, what was I going to do until my tour of duty here on earth ended?

Two western novels, written back in 1972 and 1973, were still gathering dust and growing gray with the ages. They were born in the snapping keys of my faithful LC Smith typewriter and an overactive imagination. Each evening, I would escape into our home in Reisterstown, Maryland, close the door and travel out West once again.

Each typewritten page was born, editing, retyped, and set aside. After a year and two hundred and fifty pages for the first novel, it was set aside and a second one begun. Another year later, it was also finished, set aside, and forgotten as my first-born son captured my full attention.

Fast forward fifty years and I went back to those tired old binders of graying pages of threatening Apache smoke signals, a fiery redhead; and a grizzled travel-worn scout and their adventures in the hot Arizona desert.

After scanning that first novel onto a floppy disc and then transferring it into my new Macintosh computer, I was off to the races. It took three more self-published novels before I would let myself admit that perhaps I had become a writer. After that, the plays, movie scripts, novellas, poetry, children’s books, comic strips, song lyrics and more than 700 blogs came bursting forth.

For me the journey is never ending. Fortunately, there’s no time limit on writing. That is, until the words lose their meaning and the story becomes boring. Until then, I’ll just keep pounding away on the keyboard and spin my tales of imaginative folks and (I hope) interesting storylines. It’s become ‘the rest of my life’ and I’m loving it.