Tu tombe dans le vide

"Tu tombe dans le vide" I say to people in French to summarize retirement succinctly for them. After many years of running you fall into the void which is not unpleasant in the least only that it takes adjusting to. 

I watch content sometimes about the anxiety of young people starting their lives. Will they find the right job, the right partner, the right apartment. It is a different phase of life with its own worries and anxiety. I went through much the same with much less knowledge than I possess today and managed like everyone else does with varying degrees of success and less confidence in my capabilities than I do today. My children are in those starting blocks now.

But we can surprise ourselves with what we can accomplish when necessity becomes the mother of invention. We then look back and analyze the choices made and how we might have differed in approach today. 

Retirement allows a retrospective and even encourages it. For doing so we can summarize the lessons learned and incorporate them into the years we have left.