A Different Looking Sunrise
Personal:
Life is a strange animal. You think you have it all figured out and then something comes along and changes it. Sometimes the changes are good and other times they are a little tougher. The other thing about it is that you can plan and plan, but something always comes up and the results are never what you thought they were going to be.
I remember when I was younger. I had big plans to conquer the world. Reality soon slapped me in the face with lessons I had to learn the hard way. Imagine my surprise, when several years into adulthood, I discovered that the world was not going to fall down at my feet to do what I wanted. No, life was more like a horse stampede, and I often felt like I was going in the opposite direct of those stallions.
Eventually, you settle into adulthood. No longer are you something special. You soon realize that you have to prove yourself. A surprising thing happens: You discover that you have talents you never knew were there.
With this newfound discovery, you work harder to develop those talents or skills you discovered. Then a small voice inside you tells you to share those talents and a little bit of pride builds inside you that others admire, see a lot of potential, or they may even need your talents. They encourage, promote, or help you grow those talents even more. Your confidence grows.
Before you know it, you have a wife, kids, and a full-time job. You have no time to think about the past because the present is running over you. You just have to get through that day, that moment, that deadline. The more “success” you find, the more that seems to get piled on you.
Then you start to wonder if there just isn’t something better out there. If I could just get that promotion or that pay raise. No one appreciates me at this job, maybe there is a better one out there. This house just isn’t big enough, maybe a bigger one or one in a different neighborhood will make everything better.
The next thing you know you start doubting things. You start thinking things like: “If I just did this (in my past) instead of that (what you are doing now) maybe my life would have been so much better.” Like you can rewind the tape and record over it again like nothing happened.
“Oh no, where did the time go. I can’t believe I’m hitting this birthday,” thoughts cloud your mind. Where are all the friends, family, and my fond memories? The kids that kept you up late at night with diapers that needed to be change or feedings which awoke you up from the little sleep you were getting, now have kids of their own. What’s worse, your kids’ kids, your grandkids, are now going to high school.
It seems to me, from what I’ve seen in my own life, and especially those lives of many who are years my junior, that we live in this perpetual circle where we keep trying to go back to the times, we think we missed. The biggest problems with circles are they don’t actually go anywhere. Besides, when we do get back to where we think we want to go, it still doesn’t fulfill us. Then we start to miss the times we used up trying to get back time we can never regain.
When I was a young lad cutting yards for $2 or delivering newspapers in the worst kind of weather, I’m sure my dreams were a lot bigger than the money I was earning. But, for some reason, cutting grass, in the heat of the sun, with the neighbor complaining I missed a spot, those memories stick in my mind. Surprisingly, it’s not a bad memory. I would even go so far to say that it is a good memory to me.
When I got a little older, I wanted to be my grandfather’s first grandson to graduate from college. I breezed through high school without much effort, so a college degree should be easy, right? The combination of being stubborn (not wanting to switch my major), not being smart enough (or deciding not to spend all my college efforts on studying), or having enough security to know I had a backup plan (I knew the plumbing foreman I worked during as a plumber’s helper for in the summers would always give me a regular job if I asked him), made all those plans fall by the wayside. Little did I know that this would be one of the first of many of my perceived failures.
Breezing through plumbing school, I wanted to prove I could do more than plumbing. But how do you start over when you have a wife, a son, and a house payment. You also have to have confidence in yourself, which I lacked. So, being a plumber it was. Over and over, I told myself how miserable it was to be a plumber.
I tried home renovations sales, but the promise of income never matured. Knowing I had bills to pay, I went back to the plumbing company I was working for and asked for my old job back. They were happy to get me back, but a few months later they went out of business. I decided to try to open my own plumbing business.
When my plumbing business failed, after one of those downturns in the economy, I really hated the plumbing world and decided to just get out of it. I tried several sales positions. I worked for one of those box stores where I worked my way up to assistant store manager. It was a lot of hours and not much pay. The manager was very tough to work for, too.
Then I did inside sales for a door and window manufacturer. Being the newest employee, I knew I was probably one of the first they thought of for the chopping block when they were planning massive layoffs. So, I went to work at another sales job. I went to a plumbing wholesaler. I worked there for twenty-one years in different positions.
Still, my work life didn’t seem to fill that need inside me to make something out of my life. I went to work for a manufacturer selling their product. I really liked this job. Developing a territory to sell a new product in the area was exciting. Quickly I organized an area and my excitement in the product showed. We were making end roads. Then the company sold to a competitor and my position was eliminated.
Next, I went to work for a rep agency. We represented several manufacturers and promoted their products. Like most of my sales jobs, this one was in the plumbing industry. A lot of my territory was the area I covered when I worked for the manufacturer. So, I had a good base of customers I already knew. I was excited, but soon that excitement waned. This late in my career was probably a little late to do all this traveling. Like any job, the pressures, whether put on you by manufacturers, your customers, your bosses, or even yourself, add to a dying enthusiasm.
It is here that I sit. I woke up without a job today. Nothing really happened to cause me to lose my last job, I just decided it was time to retire. Today there is no alarm clock waking me up, no schedules to plan, no goals to reach. Today is mine and my steps no longer need accountability.
It is such a relief to have all the pressure taken off my shoulders. As I turn to look at the sunrise, I can admire it without a deadline to be somewhere else. But as the sun rises up into the sky I wonder, what am I supposed to do next?
My thoughts turn back to my working years prior. All those goals, all those headaches, all those second guesses, all those struggles, all those pressures, all those sleepless nights that I lied awake knowing that I had missed doing something that day, they don’t seem so bad now. They all helped land me in the spot I was today, and they all seemed worth it now.
Then my thoughts turn toward a world I missed. In my searching, I often missed what was right there in front of me. All those tough times are now stories I will tell till I get so old I just can’t remember them anymore. There wasn’t a single deadline that caused the world to stop. No sales goal I ever made, or didn’t make, ever broke or made a company. No plumbing pipe I ever glued or soldered together ever changed how gravity works. Now it seems so silly that I spent all that time worrying about those things. That worry time could have been much better spent if I had tried to worry less and live more.
Here are my top ten lessons I learned about a work life:
1. Stop looking at the obstacles and start looking for the smiles. If you can’t find any smiles, make an extra effort to make someone smile.
2. Trade in the mirror and instead offer a helping hand. It is so much easier to find disappointment when the world is only about you.
3. Perfection never comes. Never stop trying to reach for it, though. Instead, be happy with your efforts, if you gave it your all, stop stressing over the results.
4. That house that slips through your hands, the promotion that went to someone else, that raise you were expecting that never came, are all serving a purpose. No one is picking on you, but Someone is trying to make you stronger.
5. Not all smooth, paved roads are the best ones to travel on. Often getting on the bumpy, gravel road yields greater treasures.
6. You can’t enjoy the sunrise if you don’t wake up before nine. You will never get up for the sunrise if you stay up until midnight.
7. A goal can’t be reached if you don’t make it a goal in the first place. No magic wand ever made a goal come to fruition.
8. You need to grab a shovel and dig if you want a hole. A foundation is just one giant hole in which effort and concrete were poured into.
9. A prouder memory is made by sweat than having the candy handed to you.
10. There will always be people that outwork you, are smarter than you, get luckier breaks than you do, but no one is ever going to love you more than God. Act like you know that and put more pep in your step even if things aren’t going your way.
Presidential:
The presidents are a strange group if you look at their retirements, or at least their retirements from the presidency. Eight presidents died in office (four were assassinated and four died of “natural causes”), so those never knew what it was like to retire from the presidency. One, Joe Biden, is currently serving so he hasn’t retired from the presidency yet.
Just like ordinary citizens, the presidents have used their retirement years in different ways. Some were very active, while others were more laid back. Some lived a long time after their terms were over, but others died soon after they left office.
I thought it would be cool to look at what some of the presidents did after they left office. To go a little further, I devised my top five list of the five most useful presidential retirements and my top five list of the presidents who had the most disappointing retirements. By disappointing, I mean, in my opinion, I think, or wish in some cases, their retirements were different.
Here we go:
Top Five Best Presidential Retirements
1. Jimmy Carter – Regardless of what you think of his presidency, you have to admire how he used his time after he left office. There may be, and I’m not really sure if there are, other people who did more in retirement for the greater good of others, but no president has used the title of president to promote causes like Habitat for Humanity, and the Carter Center (their goal is to improve human rights and alleviate human suffering) better than Jimmy Carter. If that isn’t enough, Carter never gave up teaching a Sunday School class at his small-town home church in Plains, Georgia.
2. Thomas Jefferson – Jefferson could have just been happy in retirement by living out his remaining years at his beautiful mountain home just outside Charlottesville, Virginia. If you have never been to Monticello, his home, I would highly recommend it. If you don’t come away from their tour impressed by his talents and intelligence, I would be completely surprised. As if writing the Declaration of Independence and approving the Louisiana Purchase, when he was President, weren’t enough metals to pin on his chest, in retirement he designed the University of Virginia. Nearly broke in retirement, he could have sold his countless books (there were actually 6487) to the highest bidder, but instead sold them to the US government which used them to start the Library of Congress.
3. John Quincy Adams – Okay, he wasn’t one of my personal favorite presidents, and not everyone admires some of his political tricks or his hard-headed attitude. How can you not admire that he took that giant ego and took a demotion, in a sense, to serve in the House of Representatives? So far, he is the only president to serve in the US House after his presidency. He didn’t even try to serve in the Senate, which most would consider a higher goal or a more prestigious position. He took his position seriously and basically worked himself to death. He is the only president to die in the US Capitol.
4. Andrew Johnson – Much like the dreaded tax collectors in the Bible, Johnson wasn’t anybody’s choice when it came time for him to try to be elected on his own (he became president when Lincoln died in office, and he was Lincoln’s Vice President). If you visit his home in Johnson City, Tennessee, they will show you the bullet holes in the walls that will show you how much some of his neighbors thought of him. Most of the “southerners” felt betrayed because he refused to join the Confederacy during the Civil War and the fact that he agreed to be Lincoln’s Vice President. Yet after he left the presidency, and neither political party wanted him on their 1868 President ballot, he got a job as US Senator from Tennessee. I know, Senators at that time were appointed and not elected, so he, unlike John Quincy Adams, had to be given the position. Still, with all the bad vibes around him, Johnson could have just pouted and went home to live out his retirement. So, whether you like him or not, you have to admire him for doing something with his retirement.
5. George HW Bush – Some may question his sanity for jumping out of airplanes until his last jump for his 90th birthday, but he had just had one of those modest retirements that doesn’t often follow most presidential character or ego. Without standing in the spotlight, except when the script called for it, he did, mostly behind the scenes, whatever the Presidents that succeeded him asked him to do. When he did get in front of the camera, it wasn’t political, but more about showing Americans how to have fun, how to enjoy life, and how it was okay to laugh about one’s self. From his crazy socks, which he loved displaying even when he was confined to a wheelchair, to his doting on his kids, grandkids, and even great-grandkids, he showed us how to enjoy retirement.
Top Five Worst Presidential Retirements
1. James K. Polk – Polk is one of my favorite presidents. In an age where many overcompensate political correctness, many may look down on him or his presidency, but the truth is, we would not be the country we are today if it wasn’t for his Manifest Destiny. Serving just one term, as he promised, Polk was one of those extreme overachievers. Almost everything that happened during his presidency went through him, even some of the small mundane details. I’m not sure if it is that he just didn’t trust anyone to do the job the way he wanted or if he was just was one of those micro-managers that had to have his hands in everything. But he had to be exhausted at the end of his term from doing everything. I’m not sure if it was exhaustion, the long farewell tour he made once he left office, or just a twist of fate, but Polk has the distinction of being the president with the shortest retirement after he left his term of office. A mere 103 days. Polk died from Cholera that he may have contracted during his farewell tour. Unfortunately, I have seen many individuals work and work and not get the chance to have a good, healthy, or long retirement, just like James K. Polk.
2. George Washington – This one almost brings a tear to your eyes. Here is a man who probably single-handedly is the reason we are a nation in the first place. Almost all his life, he gave his services, whatever they were, to serve his country or soon to be country. Even when we were British subjects, Washington was all in with being British. It was only after they dismissed him, and didn’t promote him, because as “subjects” we were considered second class citizens, that he relinquished his love for being a British subject. Always doing whatever it took to keep our independence hopes alive, he seemed like a timeless machine that had no selfishness. After two terms of the presidency, Washington felt he deserved a retirement and he certainly did deserve it. Unfortunately, like Polk, his retirement only lasted a short time, about three years. He was working his farm on one of those cold, damp winter days. Wet and chilled, the Father of Country started to feel sick. As was “modern medicine” at the time, the doctor decided to help him get better by bleeding the sickness out of him. It didn’t seem to be working, so they bleed more blood out of him. So, Washington’s death came basically from bleeding to death.
3. Woodrow Wilson – Wilson seems to be another one who worked himself to death. It probably didn’t help that he seemed prone to strokes. All excited, when he was president, that World War I was over, Wilson decided to personally go over to Europe to negotiate the terms of surrender and the peace terms. The Americans, and Congress, were none too happy with the package he came back across the Atlantic with. So, Wilson began a sell job to convince everyone that he knew what was best. Unfortunately, he had a stroke along the way and had to return to Washington, where very few would even be able to get a glimpse of him. Some believe his wife Edith was the “acting president” because she determined who and what got in for his attention. Because of his frail condition he was unable to return to his home state of New Jersey. Wilson and his wife would purchase a home on Embassy Row just a few minutes away from the White House. He would die a short time later. Currently, he is the only president whose tomb is in Washington DC.
4. Herbert Hoover – I feel sorry for Herbert Hoover. Sure, his presidency is one of the least popular when historians rank presidents, but he lived a long time after his presidency, an amazing 32 years. That was the longest presidential retirement until Jimmy Carter, who is still alive, broke that record. Carter has been retired from the Presidency for over 41 years already. Hoover seemed to spend most of his retirement years trying to convince Americans he had a good heart, and I believe he did. Thirty-two years is a lot of years to spend trying to prove you cared even if the results didn’t turn out well.
5. Ronald Reagan – Reagan is another one of those presidents whose retirement kind of breaks my heart. Having personally known someone very close to me experiencing dementia, this is a very cruel disease. It’s so hard to see someone who loved people so much, lose the ability, at times, of even recognizing those closest to them. Ronald Reagan was a people person. He loved to make people laugh and to tell a joke or story. He was one of the best of coming up with a one liner or a story on the fly. Even in his illness he loved doing it. The problem was that, unless you were someone very close to him, you probably didn’t notice that his vast inventory of stories dwindled down to just a few that he often repeated. When the company would leave, the family said he was often confused as to who he just talked to. Family members themselves were not immune to this forgetfulness. It’s so hard to take care of someone who, at times, doesn’t even recognize you. What’s worse, as their condition worsens, trips outside the house become very difficult and rarer.
Biblical:
The concept of retirement isn’t mentioned much in the Bible. I only found one time when “retirement” is mentioned in the Bible, and you have to refer to the New Revised Standard Version to find that word. It happens in Numbers 8:23-26. God basically tells Moses that the Levites “from the age of fifty years … shall retire ….” The King James Version uses the phrase: “from the age of fifty years they (Levites) shall cease waiting upon the service thereof, and shall serve no more….”
“Retirement – the act of leaving one’s occupation to live out their life in a hopeful state of leisure,” is a relatively new concept. It is believed the first hints of retirement happened in the 18th century, long after the Bible was written.
If we read our Bibles, we will know that there were a lot of Biblical people who died “on-the-job” doing the job God instructed them to do. We could include Jesus, Moses, and Joshua among that list. Most of the kings of Israel and Judah also seemed to have died “on-the-job.”
One would have to believe there were others that died “on-the-job,” too. Although the Bible doesn’t mention their deaths, there are many in the Bible you have to believe, or tradition seems to lean toward, them “working” until death. Daniel, Jonah, Paul, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel might be some of those to come to mind.
Speaking of tradition, most traditions seem to indicate that Jesus’ disciples died while “working.” Most of those traditions don’t speak of kindly deaths for the leaders Jesus taught while He was on earth. The Bible only mentions two Biblical disciple deaths: Judas Iscariot (who killed himself) and James the son of Zebedee (Acts 12:1-3, and his was a cruel death, too).
But I believe the Bible offers us some hints of what our latter years should be like.
Here are five ideas I have come up with:
1. With all the experience and experiences, you have faced along the way, I can’t believe God wants you to forget about them once you get that gold watch and clean out your locker. The task God now lays in front of you might not look anything like your previous “paid job,” but the lessons you learned from them, and life in general, can be a great benefit to someone else. At the very least, it might be a message of “hang in there, you can make it to retirement, too.” Jesus was always looking for ways to help people through this thing we call life.
2. All the excuses are gone. We often use our job as an excuse as to why we can’t do things. In many cases we may have occupations where we don’t always have control over things like our time, our schedule, or even our attitude. We miss seeing our kid’s big events because we have to be at a job or job function. That church service or class, that Bible or devotion reading, or even prayer time often suffer under our excuse of work taking too much of our time. In retirement, you are your own boss, and in charge of your own schedule. Looks like you might have to look for some better excuses or change your ways. Even Paul, after he transitioned from his Saul role, had to stop doing it his way and he had to really listen to how God wanted him to do it.
3. Whether you want to admit it or not, your legacy is important. As you get older, you find yourself looking more at the obituaries than you ever did. You look at the departed and you see their age, their family, and a little bit about their life. Someone once told me that they look at them to make sure they weren’t in there. The sad truth is that is how you sometimes feel when you get older. Does our life, or has our life, impacted others? If not, here is your final chance. Don’t give up now. Twelve relatively unknowns were chosen by Jesus to be his disciples. All but one, went on to change the world. One of the funniest things is that very little is written in the Bible about the disciples after Jesus’ death. Yet, a small fact remains, without those eleven, who knows if Christianity would have spread throughout the world like it did.
4. One of the reasons I think we look better physically when we are younger is that I don’t think God wants us spending so much time looking in the mirror when we get older. We should have learned one of the most major lessons in life about now: our life isn’t about us. God put us here, and one of the main reasons is to help each other through this life. You need to be the one asking that family with kids, that’s trying to take a picture with their kids, if you can take a picture for them so they can all be in it. Selfies shouldn’t be the first thought that enters your mind when something is going on. The prodigal son’s father never thought of what he would get out of it or whether his son might be trying to take advantage of him. No, he was happy knowing that his son needed embracing as much as he needed an embrace from him.
5. Through life’s up and downs you made it to the finishing line. You broke the tape and have a victory over the tough professional life that you thought was going to get the best of you. What do you do with a victory? You celebrate. All that training, effort, and determination has you in victory lane. When you celebrate, don’t forget the ones that got you here. Of course, there were the parents, teachers, coaches, bosses, coworkers, friends, and a huge list of others that helped you get here. Equally, there were also both good and bad experiences that helped you and have made you who you are today. But that is all useless unless you thank God, the creator, who, even though you might have doubted it at times, got you across that line. If you know this, then thank Him for all He has done in your life. He also tells us that the best victory is still to come, and it is just around the corner. Make sure everyone knows that they can come celebrate that victory, too. After all, that is the most important thing you can do with your life: help someone else come to know God so they too can cross His final victory line.
So there you have it. Some ramblings from someone who is so happy to be retired, or at least retired from my paying occupation. I’m excited for the next chapter God will open.
