Why am I showing you this? It’s a bit of card, what possible relevance could it have to my retirement life? It won’t be easy but I will try and explain, at least to myself. If you don’t like weird then stop reading. This blog is a bit of an antidote to the last blog’s dangerously upbeat feel. The thing about this bit of card is that I keep finding it in my pocket. I throw it away and a day or so later I put my hand in my pocket and there it is. There are two possible explanations. First, we’re dealing with the supernatural. Second we’re dealing with senility. The first would be scary but the second is really scary as it means I’m losing my mind. In other words I think I’ve thrown it away but I haven’t at all.
Why am I telling you this? Well, because it, this tiny bit of torn card from a battery pack, has become a symbol of all the things that are happening to me now I’m retired. Well in a sense. I sometimes think I’m fighting a losing battle. I spend my time trying to keep intellectually active, trying to hold back the forces of darkness otherwise known as dementia and this little bit of card keeps coming back to remind me all is not well. Put this alongside the clumsiness, the dropping of things on the floor, the forgetfulness, absent-mindedness (such a lovely term), the bumping into inanimate objects, the general problems with spatial awareness and the outlook is gloomy.
But wait didn’t I just write a blog about how busy / active I am? It cannot be true that a person who does so much can be losing his grip on reality as exemplified by the above little bit of card. What’s needed here is a bit of positive reframing. This little bit of card needs to become a symbol (or is it a metaphor?) of all that is good in retirement. Too heavy a burden to place upon such a modest item? Yes, you’re probably right, but then again, maybe not. I have often found that people take comfort in small things and that their symbols of well-being or their ‘comfort blanket’ equivalent can be remarkably modest. I remember a long time ago a female friend talking about the visual image she used to call up to comfort her when times were tough, was a tube of ointment. I’ve tended to go for old cricket balls including the one on the right above, Mrs Summerhouse’s comforting symbol is a sweet pea. Other people might typically carry an old photo around with them in their wallet / purse. Whatever works, the point is that something inherently humble can bring ‘joy’ punching well above its natural weight. So my little bit of battery pack card might just do the trick. Unlikely but possible.
Now for the hard part, what exactly do I want the card to represent for me as a retired person, what sensations do I want it to evoke? What can a tiny bit of ripped card, that refuses to go away even when I throw it out, represent for me as a positive retirement experience? Resilience? A refusal to be disposed with? A bit of colour in a drab world? A view that although much of what made you the person you were has gone (been torn away), you still have a part to play in a retirement life? I like this last one, it has legs although the card does not. Thus an item that once represented something negative, i.e. a symbol of my decline has become, at the flick of an intellectual switch, a force for good. So the only remaining question is, where to keep it and when to take it out and see / touch / feel it? That’s two questions but never mind.
By this time you’re probably thinking, if you have not already had this thought, that this man is mad, he really should get out more, retirement really has turned his brain to mush. But hold on a sec, positive reframing has a long and honourable history in psychology and let’s not forget, for over thirty years, that’s what I was. Pretty much the whole of my job was based on trying to find the positive in the negative and the point is, the positive was often the very same thing as the negative but just looked at through a different screen. Hence hyperactive became lively and curious, aggressive became capable of standing up for himself (usually was a him), slow learner became thoughtful and cautious. Trying to persuade parent, teacher and hence eventually the child, that they possessed positive qualities with a commensurate effect on self-esteem and a sense of optimism, was the nature of my job and I was good at it.
So there we are, a sense of optimism, if ever I needed that feeling in my retirement years, now is that time, and who would have thought that the little bit of torn card could come to symbolise such a state of grace. So retirement, I think I can say without fear of contradiction, that before being retired I would never have found the time, the inclination, nor the talent to write something like this blog. Take pleasure in the small things, see beauty where you least expect it and never throw away little bits of card. That is what retirement has taught me.
PS I don’t really believe that a small piece of torn card can possess magic, healing properties but it’s true that the card did seem to keep reappearing in my pocket even though I was certain I had thrown it out days before and its also true that, as I was walking through the park, walking the pups, that I thought the mystery of this sequence of events would make a nice blog if I could only take such a small idea and write a thousand words around it. And I have and that’s what retirement does for me, it makes me creative. Now let it go, the idea not the card, I might need that.