Before you write that retirement book, live it
It sounds more purposeful than watching videos, but first ask yourself if it is a worthy use of one’s later years.
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Retirement has a way of clarifying what truly lasts, says the writer. It is rarely one’s opinions, but more often one’s presence, generosity and faithfulness – evidence that age has made a person not merely older, but also deeper.
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: ADOBE STOCK
Jeffery Tan
After a long career, authorship can seem the ideal next act: purposeful, dignified and faintly immortal. Yet, the most important work of later life may not be what we produce, but who we become.
At some point after retirement – usually after the farewell lunch, the framed photograph and the first few suspiciously empty Tuesdays – a thought arrives with alarming seriousness: Perhaps I should write a book.
