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The Rediff Special/Anvar Alikhan

Retiring@30

So you've got your ESOPs and you've decided that you're going to retire at 30. Or preferably at 29. Right?

Think again, buddy. Retirement ain't all that it is cracked up to be. Ask anybody who has retired.

There was a time when my career ambition was to retire -- at as early an age as possible -- so that I could then "do my own thing". It was, I believed, only a matter of economics. The only question was how soon I could afford it.

And after I retired I could do all those things I really wanted to do in life: Live up in the hills, read, travel, watch movies, maybe write a novel or something. You know, that kind of stuff.

Then, somewhere along the way, I suddenly discovered that the idea of a nice, lazy, "do-your-own-thing" retirement is a myth. There ain't no such thing. You try it and you're finished. I've got first-hand evidence...

It started out, I guess, when I saw a few retired people from close up. And I realised that -- strangely -- they seemed to be as busy (or even busier) after they had retired as they had been during their working lives: doing charity work, consultancy, small-time directorships, that kind of stuff.

A retired CEO I once worked with on a project, in fact, had such a hectic personal schedule that he used to set up meetings with me at times like "between 3.15 and 3.45 on Saturday afternoon, okay?" It seemed to me that his work was his crutch and I would look at him with a mixture of incomprehension and pity. "Boy, this guy really has a problem," I used to say, shaking my head. But then he was known to be a workaholic freak. This kind of thing would never ever happen to me in retirement, of course. No sir, I had enough interests and hobbies to keep myself happily occupied.

Little did I know...

Recently, a peculiar combination of family circumstances has forced me to take temporary "retirement". And so I am reporting to you direct from the front lines, as it were.

My "retirement" has made me confront a number of issues that one would normally never pay any attention to. One of them, of course, is one's relationship with one's work..

The first thing you realise is that leisure may be wonderful. But so far you have only known it as the space in between periods of work. If there is no work to define it, leisure becomes meaningless. And then slowly, it begins to get on your nerves. It gnaws away at you and makes you all jittery and jumpy inside. It drives you bananas.

But it goes even deeper than that. Much deeper. Because I now realise what a central role work plays in one's life. And how closely one's entire identity and self-esteem are bound up with one's work (Think about it: The very first thing a person asks you -- after asking your name -- is "What do you do?"). If all you do is lie in a hammock on a beach, it soon begins to affect your self-worth and self-respect in a strange and awful way.

(At this point, let me remind you once again that I am no workaholic. I am basically just an average, lazy Joe like yourself.)

"Disguised employment," I have found, is no solution -- and by that I mean making yourself busy doing all those essential little jobs, like taxes and investments and property matters. You can do this 10 or even 12 hours a day, but it does not necessarily count as "work". It is mere "busy-ness". Proper "work" entails purpose, discipline, tension, an engagement of your mind or skills, activity that contributes to some larger cause, activity that enhances you in some kind of way (In short, precisely the kind of work you are so eager to retire from).

Man is basically a hunting animal and his brain has been pre-wired for that through millions of years of evolution. Lying around in the sun is fine in between hunting expeditions. But if you do nothing but lie around in the sun (even assuming that you have got your food needs taken care of), sooner or later something begins to corrode inside you.

So if your life-plan involves "retiring and just doing your own thing" at some point in time, I suggest you give it a serious re-think. I have been there and I can tell you buddy, retirement really sucks. The closest thing to your ideal would probably be to retire for say, three months and then come right back and work your ass off all over again.

Sorry to be a spoilsport, but I think you ought to know....

The Rediff Specials

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