I think one of the reasons retirement is so hard for many retirees is because we haven’t wrestled very well with this question.
And to wrestle with the meaning of retirement is really to wrestle with the meaning of three other words: work, rest, and play.
Our lives are made up of work, rest, and play, and a life that tends to embody healthy rhythms of all three will tend toward well-being.
But if we spend 40 years with those three out of whack, generally over-emphasizing work, and then attempting to compensate through binge-play (or “leisure”), then what’s retirement for? How will we then live into those three rhythms?
Maybe a healthy retirement actually begins in your 30s. Maybe it takes decades of learning and growing in the wise rhythms of work, rest, and play to put them into practice when “work” changes so drastically. And maybe after awhile, we might change our conception of work pre- and post-retirement so that the change wasn’t so drastic after all.
Meaningful Returns 