A life worth living

“Keeping busy?” is the question which often gets asked of people who look over 65 or so. Perhaps the person asking it reckons that the over 65 year olds have nothing left to live for, apart from filling the dreadful abyss left by the ‘busyness’ which has been taken from them through retirement – voluntary or otherwise.

The question is loaded at both ends. On the one, for the person being asked and, on the other, for the one asking it, who may be worrying about their own impending retirement and the spectre of idleness which it raises. In both cases, it leads into far deeper questions which pertain to the meaning of life itself. These are the questions many people face in retirement or possibly, as a result of adversity, much earlier on in life.

We do not live, in the fullest sense, by keeping busy.  Neither, for that matter, are we truly rich when we have simply made a lot of money or acquired power or status, which are only of use to us in this lifetime, in any case – if they last that long. There is still that part of us which achievements and attributes fail to satisfy, or ‘reach’, to allude to an advertisement from the seventies for a well known brand of beer.

Retirement focuses this truth, until now only vaguely apprehended, into reality. Left to ourselves, we are faced not so much with the past (although the past is significant in shaping our thoughts about the present) as with the present moment and with infinity itself which is couched in the present moment, though it does not begin there. Having to be still and resisting the need to be busy allows us a glimpse of infinity, also called eternity, and eternity might be like when our very brief lives enter into that ultimate dimension.  It begs two further questions; will we be wealthy in the only way which matters in this infinite dimension? In other words, will we have lived richly towards God? And will we have lived gratefully?

So the question we are faced with is whether or not we are living, in the fullest sense of the word, rather than just keeping busy. By living, I mean has our creaturely life been in tune with the greater life of God’s creating Spirit, with his generosity and joy, as well as with his grieving over the violence and greed which are the cause of so much suffering for human beings and creatures alike?

The creative ‘rush’ that makes for fulfilling work is of a piece with the energy of a creating God. Have we, in our working lives, ever sensed this and been grateful to him for it? And if our own working life has been demanding, but unrewarding and uneventful, have we sought that creative God in our colleagues and helped them to develop their gifts wherever possible?

Gratitude ought to inform the whole of our life, not just that part of it when we were in work, because gratitude is about meeting God at the deepest level of our being. Gratitude is also at the heart of the meaning of eucharist, and we are called to live eucharistically. In other words, we are called to live richly and gratefully towards God at whatever stage of life we happen to have reached.

We are also called to be open to what is good in retirement, even if it does not, on the face of it, feel very rewarding. When we consciously live like this, we are able to discern or know God meeting with our own spirit, so making retirement creative in the fullest sense. We are not just getting through another day by keeping busy, because each day is the beginning of a whole new phase of creative living.