This book is part of what we call The Parachute Library. Like all books in that Library, it is not intended as a substitute or replacement for its best-selling centerpiece, What Color Is Your Parachute? A Practical Guide for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers (ten million copies in print), but as a supplement to it.
Why do we need a supplement? Well, each time of Life has special issues and special challenges, where we all could use a little extra guidance. The time of Life from age fifty, on, is one of those times. I have a friend named John Nelson, who is an expert on that time of Life, and therefore I have asked him to write this book.
My contribution to this book is twofold: (1) To frame some of the questions and challenges during this period, as I have done in my earlier work The Three Boxes of Life, and How to Get Out of Them: An Introduction to Life/Work Planning (1978). (2) To write this introduction and overview, to get us going.
The time of Life that we are talking about here is traditionally called “Retirement.” Some people love that word. I’m not one of them. For me, it implies “being put out to pasture”—to borrow an image from a cow. It implies a kind of parole from a thing called work, which is assumed to be onerous, and tedious. It implies “disengagement” from both work and Life, as one patiently—or impatiently—waits to die. It thinks of Life in terms of work.
I prefer instead to think of Life in terms of music. My favorite metaphor is that of a symphony. A symphony, traditionally, has four parts to it—four movements, as they’re called. So does Life. There is infancy, then the time of learning, then the time of working, and finally, this time that we are talking about, often called “retirement.” But if we discourage the use of the word “retirement,” then this might better be called the Fourth Movement.
The Fourth Movement, in the symphonic world, is a kind of blank slate. It was and is up to the composer to decide what to write upon it. Traditionally, the composer writes of triumph, victory, and joy—as in Beethoven’s Symphony #3, the Eroica. But it may, alternatively, be a kind of anticlimactic, meandering piece of music—as in Tchaikovsky’s Symphony #6, the Pathetique. There the Third Movement ends with a bombastic, stirring march. The Fourth Movement, immediately following, is subdued, meditative, meandering, and sounds almost like an afterthought.
Well, there are our choices about our own lives: Shall the Fourth Movement, the final movement, of our lives be pathetique or eroica—pathetic or heroic? Your call!
I like this defining of our lives in terms of music, rather than in terms of work.
To carry the metaphor onward, in this Fourth Movement of our lives, we have instruments, which we must treat with care. They are: our body, our mind, our spirit, and what we poetically speak of as our heart, which Chinese medicine calls “the Emperor.”1 Body, mind, spirit, heart. Some of these instruments are in shiny, splendid condition. Others are slightly dented. Or greatly dented. But these are the instruments that play the musical notes and themes of this time of our lives.
The traditional notes are: sleep, water, eating, faith, love, loneliness, survival (financial and spiritual), health care, dreams (fulfilled or unfulfilled), and triumph—over all adversities—and even death.
Traditionally, the themes for this period of our lives also include planning. But I believe the outstanding characteristic of the Fourth Movement in our lives is the increased number of things we call unexpected. And that can knock all our plans into a cocked hat. So I prefer to say that one of the notes we strike, is how to handle interruptions. Martin Luther King, Jr., perhaps put it best, just before his death:
“The major problem of life is learning how to handle the costly interruptions—the door that slams shut, the plan that got sidetracked, the marriage that failed, or that lovely poem that didn’t get written because someone knocked on the door.”
Interruptions, in music, are the pauses between the notes; they are, in fact, what keep the notes from just becoming a jumble. Just listen to the first few bars of Beethoven’s Fifth. Thank God for the interruptions, the spaces between the notes.
So, where have we come thus far? Well, I suggested that it is useful to think of Life after fifty as the Fourth Movement in the symphony of our lives—the movement that comes after the first three: Infancy, then The Time of Learning, and then The Time of Working. And it is useful to think that we have instruments, which play certain themes in this movement, as we have seen. That brings us to the $64,000 question: “Toward what end? What is the point of all these notes, all these themes, in the Fourth Movement? What are they intended to produce?”
Ahhh, when I think of the overall impression left with me after I hear the Fourth Movement of any great symphony, such as Schubert’s Ninth, one impression sticks out, above all others. And that impression is one of energy. I am left with an impression of great energy. And the more the better, say I. Energy is lovely to behold, and even lovelier to possess. That energy belongs in the Fourth Movement because it brings the whole symphony to triumphant resolution.
This, it seems to me, is how people evaluate the Fourth Movement of our lives, as well. Not: Did we live triumphantly and die victoriously; but: Do we manifest energy? Do we manifest enthusiasm? Do we manifest excitement, still?
Ask any employer what they are looking for, when they interview a job candidate who is fifty years or older, and they will tell you: energy. They ask themselves, “Does the candidate (that’s us) slouch in the chair? Does the candidate look like they’re just marking time in Life? Or does the candidate lean slightly forward in the chair as we talk? Does the candidate seem excited about the prospect of working here?”
Energy in people past fifty is exciting to an employer. And to those around us. It suggests the candidate will come in early, and stay late. It suggests that whatever task is given, the task will be done thoroughly and completely, and not just barely or perfunctorily.
All right, then, energy. Where shall we find energy, after fifty? When we were young, energy resided in the physical side of our nature. We were “feeling our oats.” We could go all day, and go all night. “My, where do you get all your energy,” our grandmother would ask us. We were a dynamo of physical energy.
Can’t say the same when we reach fifty, and beyond. Oh, some of us still have it. But as we get older the rest of us start to slow down. Physical energy is often harder to come by, despite workouts and exercise and marathons. Increasingly, our energy must more and more come from within. It must spring not from our muscles but from our excitement about Life and about what we are doing in this Fourth and final Movement of our Life.
That is why, past fifty, we need to spend more time on the homework of inventorying what in Life we are (still) passionate about. The questions of our youth—what are your favorite skills? where do you most enjoy using them? and how do you find such a place and such a job or endeavor?—become critical when we are past fifty.2 The nicest compliment any of us can hear as we grow older, is: “What a passion for life she still has! Or, he has! It’s thrilling to be around them.”
And so, it is time to turn to the body of this book. All of the frame that John Nelson proposes, for our looking at this time of our Life, all the questions he suggests we must ask ourselves, and all of the inventory that he suggests we should do, are essential to finding our energy in this Fourth and final Movement of the symphony of our Life. Come with me, as we enter the main body of the book. And we shall make beautiful music, together.
—Richard N. Bolles
1. www.itmonline.org/5organs/heart.htm
2. Detailed instructions for getting at these questions can be found in my book What Color Is Your Parachute?, updated annually, and available in any bookstore.