In dreams I am a hero

 Arun Kumar

Cabo da Roca. I am told this is the westernmost point in continental Europe. It may just be a gimmick to popularize this place in travel books. A distinction a traveler can take back home and say to their friends that look I visited something unique, and now, I carry another badge of honor on my chest.

Or it may indeed be the westernmost point in continental Europe. Either way, it is a stunning place to be.

Standing high on the rocky cliff looking at the blue waters of the Atlantic, strong gusts of wind rush around wanting to lift me even higher. The blue horizon and I think I can see our home on the other side of the Atlantic.

I am glad that on the spur of the moment, while taking a trip to Cascais, I decided to come here. The rocks I stand would also be the farthest point away from home during this trip.

If you think of it, every trip away from home has the farthest point that we reach, turn back, and start the journey back to home. It is like throwing a stone up in the sky and following the laws of nature, the stone makes a graceful arch, reaches its highest point, and returns back to Earth, its home.

I am that stone.

High above the blue waters of the Atlantic, for a moment, I feel glad that I made this journey and actualized it from merely being a plan into a reality.

It is not always so. Sometimes I just keep dreams for the sake of dreaming and am in no hurry to crystallize them into diamonds they could be.

Unrealized dreams have a certain warmth to them. They can be an anchor that does not let us drift. They are the safe harbor we can fly back to when at the end of the day, the sun starts to descend. On occasions, they can be something for us to look forward to when we wake up in the morning.

During the day, they become daydreams to bring solace under the summer sky; they become fluffy clouds that float by and offer moments of shade.

Why actualize dreams when they have so much to offer. And who knows, dreams turned into reality may not be something they promised to be.

In The Alchemist there is a crystal merchant who is a middle-aged man living in Tangier and gives Santiago, the protagonist, a badly needed job. The crystal merchant’s dream is to make a pilgrimage to Mecca. However, he does not want to fulfill his dream because he thinks he would have nothing left to live for if he did go to Mecca and realized his dream.

This story encapsulates another niche of emotions dreams can fill. While dreaming, it feels like there is always something we can start tomorrow. The possibility is always there. If we actualize the dream today, tomorrow we may have to face our fears of emptiness. What next? Where do you go from here?

Perhaps, the same happens with our tendency for making endless plans and not taking the steps to lay the first few stones of what may turn out to be the next Taj Mahal. Well, not really that majestic, but still.

Somewhere, there is also a fear in taking the first step out from the dreamworld that after all, we may not be up to the task and might fail.

I want to write but feel afraid that I may not have ideas worth penning. In the end, what I will end up with would be two pages worth of mindless drivel.

Taking the first step, going from plans to taking the first step is also breaking the laws of motion — inertia. It is so much easier to keep doing what I am doing — dream — than to make a change.

In dreams and endless plans, I am a hero. In them, I do not fail. The promise of something is so much sweeter than the reality may turn out to be. Why tempt pricking the balloon?

While thinking of realizing dreams, it is easy to fall prey to the finistophobia — emotion of fear generated by anticipation of endings often followed by a sense of emptiness.

But …

…then I look back, a lesson from my own personal history tells me that taking actions often is the seed for new challenges and opens up more possibilities. Endings end up becoming new beginnings.

I need not be afraid of the prospect of emptiness. The universe offers an infinite number of challenges to pick from.

Oftentimes, finishing an article gives ideas for two more to follow.

While I stand on the edge of the cliffs at Cabo da Roca and look at the horizon far away where sky touches the turquoise water, and as the wind caresses my face, it all looks so much better than it was in my dreams.

On the journey back, I started to dream of visiting Diamond Head the next year.

One dream is realized and in its wake another dream sprouts.

Ciao.

Soft and hard (of retirement)

 

Arun Kumar

As far as I know, the wheel of life gets a single turn between birth and death, and after completing that one cycle, it self-destructs.

In doing so, the wheel goes through the innocent years of childhood, the learning years of youth followed by the years of building a career, and finally, if all goes well, then hopes of living many years enjoying a contemplative retirement.

For retirement years we nurse a dream that we would sit back, relax, and live a life on our own terms.

Perhaps we will, but only if we do spend time and effort in preparing for the outcome we dream for, thereby increasing the probability of its being realized.

It is important to recognize that the dream of spending years in retirement sitting on the porch in a rocking chair watching orange and purple sunsets is not a natural outcome of evolution that brought us here. Retirement is a modern construct and does not have any teleological reasoning to exist.

The notion of retirement is a consequence of the accelerated pace at which human evolution has progressed. By doing that, we have disassociated ourselves from the much slower pace of the process of natural selection that molds the development of our skills necessary to propagate the genes in response to the environment we live in.

Within a time span of the last 200-years or so, improvements in the basic hygiene practices, advances in medicine and vaccination, have resulted in us living much longer than our DNA and genes really require us to do.

200 years ago, the concept of retirement did not exist. How to best deal with a longer life span is something that the evolutionary process did not prepare us for. In developing skills required to have a successful retirement, we are entirely at our own wits.

A fundamental requirement that comes with living longer is a continual need for resources to keep us functioning. These resources are the calories we need to keep our cells humming. In the past this need was met by hunting and gathering. But not anymore.

In earlier days, as we got older and our limbs began to get weaker and we were no longer agile enough to surprise an impala or walk miles to forage fruit and berries at the other end of the forest, it was a call for our inevitable demise.

But now as we have evolved, the rules by which we find calories have changed. We no longer go to the forest to hunt and gather to meet our incessant need for resources. Hunting and gathering has been replaced by bartering our skills with money being the intermediary unit that facilitates the task.

Now, to meet the energy requirements for cells we need money. The rows of trees in the forest have now been replaced by the aisles in the supermarket, and instead of hunting with a bow and arrow the choice weapon is a credit card.

We now need to have money and have plenty of it to be able to realize the dreams of sitting in the rocking chair on the porch.

There is no free lunch. With an increasing life span living could be an expensive endeavor requiring lots of money.

Longevity is a double-edged sword. It is an opportunity to enjoy time, expand our horizons, re-engage in activities that may have fallen by the wayside, but doing so is going to require money to barter for calories.

Long winded story, but the bottom line is that in retirement years, to be able to meet our tangible and intangible energy requirements, we better plan to have money before we get there.

To drive the message home there is plenty of advice out there. We are told to:

● Start saving for retirement early.

● Make regular contributions from the monthly income and make that the highest priority.

● Live within the means and do not get saddled by debt.

● Invest money to make it grow and not fall behind and let it get blighted by inflation.

● When investing, aim for the long term, diversify, and periodically, rebalance.

● As you get older, adjust the risk profile of the portfolio.

● Be agile and adjust as needed.

● And do not trust your gut feelings when investing. Investing is a game where not reacting to visceral feelings is a virtue.

I wonder if squirrels are given similar advice when they hoard nuts to get through the winter. Even if they are not, the advantage for them, however, is that they live through winters many times and have a chance to get it right. We do not have the same luxury of living through many cycles of the wheel of life and learn from our mistakes.

Naturally being wise individuals, we read the books and implemented all the good financial strategies, bought a rocking chair and are all set to sit in it, blast off and enjoy the ride but…

Whenever there is a “but” at the end of a sentence, there is a possibility for a different perspective that follows.

…but then the engines sputter. It turns out that there is more to realizing the dream retirement than just money to meet our energy (physical) requirements.

Here are how the events play out for lots of people who retire.

We may not think about it but psychologically after a long career entering the last phase of life could be a seismic and a discombobulating event.

Over the years, our work and career morph into a temple of sorts. As for offerings, we give our own heart and soul on the altar. In return, the temple bestows upon us important blessings — a sense of meaning and purpose; an identity; a sense of recognition; a place to compete and be the leader of a pack; a place to belong to a tribe; a structure to our life. The list of blessings the temple of work offers is long and becomes an important religion that we follow conscientiously.

The moment of retirement is when all these blessings get taken away. The day we walk out of the temple for the last time, along with handing over the badge and the laptop, we also relinquish everything that the temple blessed us.

Paradoxically, entering retirement and in the last phase of our life, we become newborns again. Being a newborn, psychologically we are ill prepared for life ahead and find that financial preparedness is not the only thing we are going to need for a happy retirement.

We do not know how we are going to fill the discretionary time that we had looked forward to. The time affluence, suddenly, does not look so romantic anymore.

There we stand looking quite baffled, needing to build another temple with our own hands, and in there, build and install our new identity, a new purpose etc. If not prepared, building such an edifice is a daunting task.

To make matters worse, this is probably the first time in our life that we have to build a temple with our hands. It does not take too long to realize that we do not have a bricklayer’s hand. We either never had the required tools, or if did, the skills were lost somewhere in the attics of the past.

Similar to advice we are given to secure the financial side of the retirement life, would it not be good if we were also told of strategies to follow and also develop the soft side of retirement — building an identity, finding a purpose, establishing social connections, feeling needed, having some temporal structure to our days?

The good news is that there is plenty of advice out there for this also. Fortunately, the process parallels that for putting together a secure financial nest egg, sprinkled with some added condiments.

● Start early and invest regular time and effort in pondering what the post-retirement life could be like. What would we do with the sudden luxury of time affluence?

● Regularly Visualize and ponder over the psychological side if you were to the retire, for example, if suddenly work was taken away would you be able to manage?

● Before retiring, put together a portfolio of engagements and activities that you could easily slide into.

● Keep a long perspective when investing in the psychological aspects of retirement.

● As you and your attitudes change, rebalance the portfolio of engagements.

● Take some weeks off and occasionally give a test drive to the portfolio of engagements and see how they feel? Be agile and make tweaks as necessary. Live in your personal temple and see if you can breathe as easily as you are breathing now.

● And first and foremost, do not trust your gut feelings and tell yourself, nah, when time comes, you have the wherewithal to figure out what your new temple would be.

If you do, there could be a nasty surprise waiting for you. One of the rockers in the rocking chair would come with a misalignment and the chair would wobble.

Ciao.

AP is a place to be

 

In July 2021, on an auspicious day
when the moon felt lucky
and the mood was gay
I had jumped into the river AP
to share some words
that constantly circled in the air
like a flock of birds.

I didn't quite know
what to expect
but secretly hoped
that by my post tenth
I will be among the best,
no longer be a ghost
I will be a darling of masses
like a crunchy buttered toast.

And indeed,
on my second post
there came some comments
that were worth some boast.

I said to the self
there you see
you are well on the way
to become a poster child
and will longer be a
lost voice in the wild.

The day dream kept soaring
until I realized
that the comments were
from the group of AP greeters
and there was no need
to get quiet so high;

AP greeters are there
to welcome the newbies
and lend them an ear
and not them peter.

It was a bit of damper
on my dreams of glory
but words persevered
to tell this story.

And with my post 100
to say thank you all
for your comments
and not letting me fall
and more so to say
AP is a place to be
so come and stay. 

The boiling frog metaphor and work life

 

Arun Kumar

We all have heard the metaphor of a frog in a pan of water sitting on a burner and temperature is slowly being raised by a fraction of degrees every so often. The metaphor goes that the frog, being a cold-blooded animal, whose body temperature keeps pace with the ambient temperature, would not feel the slow rise in the temperature, will sit placidly in the warming water and will eventually die as its cell functions gradually fail.

Whether the metaphor is true or false, it does not really matter. The point is that this metaphor is used in various contexts that humans, even with much higher levels of cognitive ability compared to a frog, also fail to recognize slow changes even if those changes have adverse influence eventually.

Take the debate about the potential influence of climate change on humans and the environment. A 2oC change in the mean temperature over 100 years falls in the category of meh, what is the big deal.

Indeed, it is true that gradual changes are hard to perceive on a daily basis, nonetheless, every instant they are happening all around and within us. The basic tenet of living organisms is continuous change.

A few weeks ago, I went on a trip for ten days. When I returned, all of the summer plants in the garden looked so much taller. It was as if they knew I was not around and together they conspired to grow faster and surprise me on my return. And they did. The first sentence I said when I saw them was — look much taller they became in ten days.

I am sure if I had stayed home and watched those plants every day, I would not have perceived their gradual growth. The impression after ten days would have been different, and I would have muttered to myself — are they ever going to grow and bloom before the summer is over?

Life looked through a series of snapshots separated in time gives a different impression than if watched continuously.

I am a victim of imperceptible changes without recognizing their consequences in another important way that catches many of us by surprise. It is how over the years, gradually the work life becomes all-encompassing and ends up becoming our identity, our purpose, and our meaning.

Looking back, I have no idea how and when this transformation happened. Slowly the tentacles of work life edged out other engagements in life.

I used to have time, and an interest in reading and used to read at least 20 books in a year. As years of working life went by that number kept going down. Reading ended up merely flipping through a stack of unread issues of Time (that kept getting deposited in the mailbox on a weekly basis) that I would carry with me on work travels to someplace.

The consequence of complete takeover of work over all aspects of life became clear when the prospects of leaving work (i.e., retirement) started to become real and the notion that one day work life will no longer be there came as a rude shock. The realization was like when sometimes we wake up after a deep sleep and for a few moments do not know where we are.

There are no regrets though. Work, and what I did was fun. It was an intellectually satisfying period, but it did happen at the expense of edging everything else away. That tide is now receding. It is time to clean up the debris left behind and to pick up the elements that fell off from the former life and stitch them back together.

Only now my eyes and mind are slowly adjusting to a new paradigm in which work is a room in which I enter through a door and at the end of the day leave the room through the same door for a different world.

Now I do not check the emails after hours or on weekends and make a concerted effort to read each day even if it is a few pages.

Talking about the frog there is another bit of scary trivia. How does rise in temperature by 1 Deg impacts human body? It raises the metabolic rate by 10%.

Ciao.

Beyond middle age

 

A defining feature
of what to anticipate
beyond middle age
is that
before the soles hit the floor
thoughts wander
whether the wind today
would be from the north
or from yonder
and joints 
will they ache yet again.

Whatever you do, do it well because YOLO

 Arun Kumar

Yvoire Caslte, Lake Geneva

The universe I will not touch is infinitely larger in comparison with what I will see touch and see.

At the end of life, I would only manage to traverse a sliver of this world and would only meander around in the vicinity of an infinitely small speck lost among its vastness.

If I were to trace the trajectory of all my movements since my birth, most of it would be concentrated around four places I have lived for extended time — two in India, and two in the US.

Coming out of those four points will be occasional wanderings to distant places. Those would be the tails of the frequency distribution of my meanderings. They would be my Black Swans.

Sitting here on the deck of the boat cruising along Lake Geneva I am wondering if those points will even be visible from the international Space Station circling the Earth.

It is the month of May, and we are on a trip to Geneva. In the past couple of days, we walked the old town, visited the St. Pierre Cathedral, took a trip to CERN, went to Carouge (Geneva’s small Italy), and while there, had a wonderful lunch at Indian Rasoi (recommended in the Michelin’s Bib Gourmand list of restaurants).

Today we are taking a boat trip on Lake Geneva to Lausanne and back. The entire trip will take about 7–8 hours. Along the way, we will dock at quaint little towns like Nyon, Yvoire, and Morges to drop and pick passengers, young and old.

As the boat approaches these places slowly start to emerge. Nyon had a boardwalk with a restaurant dotted along it. People were sitting and having a leisurely three course lunch (with crusty bread and an olive dip as a side) or were enjoying a cup of coffee with croissants. In the backdrop there were occasional tall spires of the churches that rise above the rooftops and the green canopy of treetops.

Approaching the town of Yvoire the ancient castle on the very banks of Lake Geneva starts to shimmer on the distant horizon. After the boat docks, almost the entire contingent of the guests on the boat disembarks and treads uphill from the lake towards town. They all have been reading the same guidebooks and the day trips from Geneva. What gets promoted in their pages becomes a self-perpetuating positive feedback loop.

Throughout the trip other inviting little towns come into view and then recede. Some of these places call me to step off the boat and take a leisurely stroll for an hour or two.

On their own, these towns feel like they would be worth spending some time and getting familiar with. Perhaps, there is a hidden gem in one of its by lanes; a sight that would have made me feel instantly nostalgic as if I had been here before. But I would never know; we stay on the boat and through the camera on the phone try to pin the place in my trajectory of life.

Watching these places come into view and then recede, I feel the gentle ache of time drifting by and of its finiteness. Given the finite time I will only manage to see a few places, get to take in a few experiences. There is so much more I would not see and ever experience.

I would not get down at Nyon and Youvre and spend a day or two each and get familiar with its sights and sounds, and perhaps, the feel of cobblestones on our bare soles.

Side by side with that ache there is also a question that accompanies it — How does it matter if I do not see them all? Does it matter more what I missed than what I did get to see in the time I will have in Geneva?

I know the answer, seeing it all really does not matter. Among the infinity of things, I could see what matters more is what I did get to see. The other side is a battle that is already lost — there will always be more to see than I do get to see. That is what infinity is — subtract infinity from infinity and what is left is still infinity.

What matters more is that although I cannot see them all but what I do see and experience, I should see and experience, and savor them well. If I do not, what a terrible waste of the sliver of time I have been given it would be.

In that wisdom (which in the past, I have seldom acted on; so much for that), I am reminded of a podcast episode, the subject matter of which was YOLO — You Only Live Once.

The message in the podcast was that the implication of YOLO is not to do as many things as possible because you are going to YOLO and would not get another chance. Instead, make a concerted effort to excel in doing a few activities you get to do because, after all, YOLO would not allow for the luxury of getting another chance.

And while listening to that podcast I also learned that the origin of YOLO goes back to the Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart.

Sitting on the deck of the boat, instead of feeling sorry for not being able to spend a day or two in Nyon or in Yvoire, I should feel privileged to be able to see and soak in the beautiful sights of these towns passing by.

I may not get to see it all or do it all and traverse the vast tracts of the universe, and in trying to do that, try to invent hyperdrive, but if I try to be fully aware of the small part of the universe I will see, within that lies it’s the pleasure of getting familiar with another kind of infinity.

Ciao.

When life ends, it … really … ends

 

Arun Kumar

 

The possibility of dying without knowing what happens after is an ungluing bit of news. It is a bad ass factoid that has molded human behavior and created an uncountable number of superstructures of philosophical thoughts. And it is not that we had the luxury of eons to stitch philosophical thoughts and behaviors together. It all happened in the last 5000 years or so.

 

Not finding any plausible evidence that the self continues beyond death, if we do reach the conclusion that when life ends, it really ends, is it even possible to ever come to terms with our mortality and have a functional life?

 

Is it possible to find a place in the landscape of our thoughts where if the idea that our existence is finite springs up hoping to surprise us, we just shrug our shoulders and say, meh, thank you, but I am fully aware that it is finite, and move on.

 

Can we reach a state that is something like I have been told to strive for during meditation - let thoughts bubble up, note their presence, and let them float away with the current.

 

The question I am pondering is what one needs to do after realizing that when life ends, it really ends, and be able to have a functional and enjoyable existence while we are here.

 

It is not too hard to infer or become convinced that there is not a before and an after the start and the end points on the timeline on which I will exist (a timeline that, I think, exists without me, although philosophers will say that it is a debatable point, and starting from that create another philosophical superstructure, which I am sure, already exists).

 

At least for me, or what I hear from the limited number of people that are in the circle of my limited universe, there is no evidence to the contrary.

 

I do not remember the moment of my birth or what was before that (I was too young to remember anything, and further, as consciousness evolved, the memories of what was before birth did not appear either).

 

It could happen that as I get older and cognitive faculties decline, and if I would die of natural physical wear and tear, then like birth, I may not even know the moment of death or what comes after.

 

But if I were to die with my faculties intact, would I then remember what comes after that? There are plenty of unfortunate instances when cognitive faculties are intact until the last moment. Consider the example of the human cruelty of putting people on the death row or under a guillotine.

 

Another point to note is that not knowing what comes after death is different from not knowing what was before birth. Birth, after all, happened but death has not happened yet. One can have another philosophical argument on how one can hope to know what has not occurred yet.

 

To push back against that possibility, for a moment just assume that I do continue to exist in some form and consider what some logical outcomes may be.

 

There is no reason that my present form is the one and only that is going to be there. If there is one then why not more? Why one and not two?

 

If indeed true and I have lived many times, even then I do not carry any remembrance of what existed after my previous deaths(s) either. Following the philosophical traditions, one can also pose plausible hypotheses for explanations why it may be so.

 

A simple hypothesis could be that because a finite brain cannot carry the information from an infinite cycle of births and deaths, and therefore, life has evolved mechanisms to forget what happened before. Natural selection, after all, can easily give a plausible reason for something that exists and has not yet gone extinct. In the counterfactual worlds where I went extinct, the trait of remembering past lives became an evolutionary burden.

 

Or perhaps, I do not remember anything because it is the first time I have had a lifeform where I have the consciousness that allows me to think and ponder over this question. And this would be the one and only lifetime it would ever happen.

 

I can tie myself in knots splitting hairs, but a simple fact is that once I become aware about the birth and death AND do not know what came before and what would come after, I can come up with various hypotheses that can possibly explain why that is so.

 

In deciding which one is correct, one can also follow the Occam’s razor. Given the overwhelming evidence, the least complicated inference one can draw is that when life ends, it … really … ends.

 

Also, irrespective of whether I continue to exist or not, as I do not remember anything before or after, functionally, my situation is no different from inferring that when life ends, it really ends.

 

If I accept that, I open a gate for all kinds of awkward questions to come knocking.

 

Is there meaning to this finite existence? What is the point of being born and going through living only to die? Without any meaning, ultimately is not it absurd to go on repeating the same cycle of activities we engage in day after day.

 

They are the questions that humanity has faced in its past and has tried either to argue out of dilemmas it poses or has tried to find various antidotes as measures of self-protection.

 

This brings me back to the original question…

 

Is it even possible to ever come to terms with our mortality and have a functional life? Yes, perhaps, it is possible, but for now, it is just a vague feeling.

 

Occasionally for fleeting moments I get a passing feeling of connectedness with the vastness of the universe and that brings the insight that it is possible that when life ends, it really does not end.

 

I can think of reasons why I will continue after my death is a plausible notion and it comes from realizing that the timeline exists independently of me, and star and galaxies were present along that timeline before I came along and will continue to exist after I pass away, and (b) the sum of mass and energy is conversed.

 

I also know that every other thing in this universe is made of the same atoms and at a fundamental level we are all the same. Although the present configuration of atoms that make my present form will disintegrate, I will disintegrate, some of what I am was part of some form in the past and will become part of some other form in the future.

 

If that is true and is what happens to me after death then I continue to live as being part of some form or other. Further, the world in which the form I would become lives in would be the sum of acts I do today. And that also imparts a meaning to what I do in my present form – for my future self, I should make the present a better place.

 

As for why I do not remember what was before or after my finite existence, and atoms do not have a means to carry memory, even if I continue to exist in different forms, I will not have the means for a memory of before and after.

 

I know what you are thinking. How is the plausibility of what I am proposing - when life ends, it really does not end - any different from believing in a religion? A one-person religion of my own sorts.

 

Perhaps it is, but I have to find my own religion and one that fits my body and mind and allows me to have a functional life.

 

Ciao.

The winter is just around the bend

 

Graying hairs stare back
silently in the mirror,
and outside the misty window
laden with streaks of dew,
leaves are turning
purple, gold,
and shades of yellow.

An autumn descends,
and the winter is
just around the bend.

Little did I know

 

One day
a hair turned gray
and I said
there no need to worry
or go hurry hurry
there is plenty of life
with a wonderful wife
and if you cannot eat all that candy
it is just dandy
there will always be
another day handy,

but,

little did I know
that there will come a point
marked along
the line of time
when there be aches
in most of my joints
and all I will get to eat
is a mouthful of pills, and
a bowl of greens
sprinkled with
some olive oil,
and some thyme.

A fruit brawl

 

In an empty bowl
a few words fall -
a peach, a grape
a banana, and an apPLe
that looks a bit
bent out of shape.

Is it the poem
that I was hoping to write
or has turned into a
fruit brawl?

Retirement – A Perfect Storm

 

Arun Kumar

We live through different stages in our life and along the way goals, purpose, perspective keep evolving.

We start from the exuberance of youth having a basket filled with infinite opportunities, and a life that stretches forever ahead of us. In our youth, there is no shortage of engagements, each one having a purpose, that carves up the outlay of our time.

A large block of our time goes into learning skills that will support our wellbeing in future. We go to college, engage in the study of a subject so as to earn our living. Another part of our time also gets spent actively seeking out a life partner. Procreation, after all, is the secret agenda of genes that are the hidden Puppeteers in Control.

In those youthful days, we are also in the company of fellow comrades and share similar goals. We have a sense of belonging; we have a tribe.

The journey through our days in youth is purposeful and the steps we take each day, each month, each year bring us closer to what we set out to achieve.

The end of youth is marked by the graduation day, and we start the career building phase of our life.

The start of a career is an exciting period. Career building is also a time of hard work. We seek stability and want to rise among our peers leading to a career with more responsibilities, better job security, and needless to say, a better income. Initial stages of a career may not be easy, but we are filled with the drive to reach goals and feel like having a definite purpose.

During the earlier and middle part of the career building phase, we will also find a life partner, buy a home, have a family, all requiring substantial investment of our time. Our careers become our identity, we work hard, we advance, we raise a family. Moments of our days are always filled with some activity.

Life stays busy, there is little time for reflection, and in the wake of our business, years pass by.

Slowly we approach the middle or later stage of our career. Working tirelessly, we made a niche for ourselves. We have a stable position and are respected by our peers. All feels well and there is no tear in the fabric of space and time.

Then one day there is a surprise – someone organized a 60th birthday celebration for us. A party that has the unintentional consequence of waking us up from our slumber.

A realization dawns that we are getting old. Along with that a few other thoughts come marching in. An idea begins to gel that our time on earth is limited. We also realize that someday we need to phase out our working life, and…

…one day we will be RETIRING.

In the growing realization of getting old and needing to retire, hints from incoming signals also add to. We find that it is becoming harder to stay in the mainstream, keep up with new technologies and innovations. We know Fortran but now Java is the rage.

We also feel the push of the younger generation elbowing in, there are also subtle hints from the party goers. Their looks are saying that it is their time to have more responsibilities, have more opportunities to travel, and whatever else they think are the privileges of being higher on the totem pole.

With the present act coming to an end, a host of questions creep into our consciousness - What will be my identity during retirement? What will hold meaning and purpose? What will fill in for my (few) work friends? What will we do with the time affluence?

That is then the trauma of transitioning into retirement hits us.

All transitions are hard but the transition into retirement is a notch above the rest. It is a perfect storm – we will be leaving so much behind of what work meant; we are old and suddenly there is an awareness of aches and pain that were there but were fell in the category of meh; we are mortal beings; whatever we do next will be the last act; and the icing on the cake is that we have no clue what we are going to do next.

It has been a couple of hours into your surprise 60th birthday party. People are starting to leave for their cubicles and the crowd is thinning out. People who volunteered for the cleanup are starting to collect the trash.

Finally, when the 60th birthday celebration comes to an end, you slowly walk out of the room feeling as if you have no clothes on.

Ciao.

Philosophical edifices

 

So many edifices
have been built
some simple
barely a small room
with a single latticed window
looking outside
at life's puzzle

others,

tall, intricate, all imposing
trying to reach the heavens,

that us on the street
rushing to the subway
chasing destinations everyday
can’t hope to ever climb.

They all tell us how to live
an equanimous life
and yet, we suffer
to put it all together
and take a slow walk
on the dew laden grass
that I can see
looking outside
the stained glass window.