Work Hard, Retire Hard

My 15-year-old is obsessed with retiring. This is before he has worked a single day in his life. His future career of choice is even based on the idea of retirement: He wants Andy Rooney’s job.

“Mom, I want to be him when I grow up. He sits on television for two minutes and talks about nothing.”

I explained to him that Andy Rooney had a long and distinguished career as a journalist and war correspondent, and that he’s still working at the age of 92. Yes, he works briefly each week on television. But do you know how much work it takes to put out even two minutes of commentary each week?

And yet, I couldn’t help but think that if I was my son’s age and I had to choose between the life of his intense, stressed-out working parents or his grandparents as role models, I too would pick the retired folks. They spend their days wondering which grocery store has the best samples, where to eat dinner, and how to stay out of the heat. We spend our days running around working for others, screaming at our kids to help around the house, and never seeing the light of day.

The other day, my son asked, “Mom, what’s going to be your and Dad’s retirement hobby?”

I hadn’t actually thought about this because I’ve never actually thought about retiring. And in fact, I probably will never be able to retire, given that my 15-year-old’s only ambition is...to retire. I asked him, “Aren’t you interested in aspiring to make a difference in the world, create and add value, work hard, and earn your retirement?”

“Yup,” he said, but he didn’t look up once as he played with his iPhone, so I think he was humoring me.

Now, I recognize he’s a teenager. But he’s going against family tradition here. My father-in-law supposedly retired in his early 60s, soon after my mother-in-law passed away. But he didn’t really retire. He joined the Israeli Army, drove cancer patients to their treatment, and became an auto-parts deliverer in Florida. Once a workaholic always a workaholic. Only after 30 years of pseudo-retirement is he finally enjoying doing nothing.

My son enjoys doing nothing but he’s only 15.

My dad also never retired. You could say he died with his boots on. He was an OB/GYN, and only at age 74 did he stop performing surgeries and delivering babies. But he kept seeing patients. When I asked him who would bother seeing a doctor with such a limited practice, he said, “Very old women, Pamela, and very young women.”

He was so dedicated to his work that he brought work home. On the day he died, he had seen 30 patients and then brought home 50 files so he could return patients’ calls.

Mind you, our family may be addicted to working, but that doesn’t mean we’re stupid about working. Yes, my father loved going in to see his patients and diagnose their problems, but if there was any heavy lifting involved, he would send them to other doctors. He only saw patients one night and three days a week. My mother aligned her work schedule to my dad’s, and in the summer they worked even less. They would leave for their home in the Poconos from Wednesdays through Sundays. If something like a good play or a concert came up, they would cancel—the work, that is. So really they were just working now and then in between being retired.

After my father died, my mother lamented that they never got to enjoy retirement together. But I know they never would have enjoyed real full-time retirement anyway because he would have driven her crazy.

My mother is now 80, but she still works three days a week. On those days, I don’t worry about her. In a parent/child role reversal, I know she’s staying out of trouble when she’s seeing patients in her office. I’m still trying to figure out what kind of patients my mother, the Freudian psychoanalyst, sees. Perhaps, like with my dad, very old and very young ones. Actually, I’m still trying to figure out how she hears the patients she sees because she hears maybe half of what I say to her. Perhaps it doesn’t really matter. Perhaps the patients really just want to talk out loud, and they don’t care if she can’t hear them. (I care if she hears me; if I were her patient, I would have fired her long ago).

Whenever I ask her to consider retiring and moving into a senior living community with great activities and people her own age to play with, she totally freaks out. “Pamela, I’m still working.” When I tell her she would have an instant new patient population, she gets even angrier: “They wouldn’t want to see their therapist at bridge.” But why not? They could get some free advice over cards.

Really I’m not surprised that she’s pushing back against retirement. Her brother is 90 and still working. He’s a metallurgical engineer and drives all over the New York metropolitan area consulting at manufacturing firms. I’m actually less worried about him working than I am about him driving; he’s a brilliant engineer but a terrible driver.

My husband’s uncle, who is 80, keeps getting hired back five years after retiring from the pharmaceutical industry. First, his protégés kept calling him back to work with them, and now his protégés’ protégés are hiring him.

So my big question: Like a tree falling in the forest, if you don’t stay retired, did you actually ever retire?

There’s a theory that more and more people will forgo retirement because of the economy. But my anecdotal research says that some people never want to give up working, and it isn’t always about the money. Last month I got a call from a 91-year-old friend who became an actor at the age of 75 after being a dentist his whole adult life. He had a very successful second career playing the cadaverous drunk in a bunch of John Waters films, using his age to his advantage. And at 91, he still works as an acting coach at a community college (he stopped doing theater because he couldn't remember the lines).

Perhaps it’s a matter of seeking a second act in life, which I can totally relate to: I’ve already had my second, third, fourth, and fifth acts, giving up being a lawyer to become an actor, then a professor, a writer, and now combining everything as a consultant to help business leaders present their messages with passion.

But while I work as much as I can, according to the bar associations in New York State and Washington, D.C., I am officially a retired lawyer. I even pay dues for that title. So maybe that’s where my son is getting the wrong idea: Andy Rooney works two minutes a week, and I’m officially retired altogether.

According to Susan M. Larson, a Rochester-based life-planning coach, retirement as a specific phase in life is becoming obsolete, anyway. Larson says people need a life purpose to keep their minds and bodies alert at any age. She cites Marc Freedman, whose book The Big Shift coined the phrase “Encore Phase” for the post-50 generation, for helping to create a movement that’s redefining the concept of retirement.

This is good news for me, given that I’ve just turned 49 and had no idea I was supposed to start thinking about retirement next year (I’ve been having enough trouble thinking about the required age-50 colonoscopy).

What my son doesn’t realize is that retirement is a relative term. So to answer his question, I told him that I love my work so much, I can’t imagine ever retiring. And if I did retire, my hobbies wouldn’t be far from what they are now: reading, movies, theater, museums, cooking. I’m not sure I would become a whole different person, suddenly taking up golf or painting watercolors. I’d do those things now if I wanted to, wouldn’t I? My philosophy has always been to do something—anything—right now. It’s a philosophy I espouse to my 15-year-old every time I see him lying in bed watching videos.

I suppose the only thing I’d do differently if I were truly retired would be to give more time to charity and, for that matter, more money too—which means I better not retire so I can keep earning to reach that goal. In the meantime, I’ll continue to focus on those things that make working all the more satisfying: making a difference in the world, creating value, and just plain working hard.

My hope is to inspire my kids to work hard and then, in about 50 to 60 years, retire hard. But in that order. Got that, son?