I recently met up with an old friend; an event which is always inordinately complicated to set up. Either I can’t make a particular date, or he can’t, or, as happened in this instance, we got our months mixed up.
The gaps between our meetings can be so long that there’s plenty of catching up to do. Or, occasionally, there isn’t – our lives have ticked along in pretty much the same way that they did since we last met. That doesn’t happen very often, but it’s a little depressing when it does. We’re all running out of time. It would be a shame if it wasn’t interesting.
But on this night my friend had some breaking news. Over whiskey sours, he announced that just an hour before, he had resigned from his job.
It wasn’t that he disliked his job; he was very good at it. Nor that he could afford to give up working. But his kids are grown up and he had reached a point where he needed a bit of time and space just to think. His wife had resigned too and the two of them were going to travel around Europe a bit, then figure out a plan.
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Various life events had given the idea an increasing sense of urgency: the death of some close friends, the ennui of the pandemic, and his own sense of getting older. He, like all of us, was running out of time. Be a shame if it wasn’t interesting.
Any of us could be hit by a bus in the morning, but when you definitely know that you’ve gone past the halfway point in your life, then there is – or there should be – a refocusing effect: what’s more important comes to the fore. For many people, that can mean no change whatsoever: they are exactly where the want to be. For my friend, it was the realisation that his professional life was taking up far too much of his being and available head-space. And I know other people for whom that refocusing was a liberation; specifically, from the small tyranny of ambition.
These people are retired – from working, not from life – and can now cheerfully admit that they never had any ambition. They weren’t lazy or feckless. They did well at their jobs, paid their bills, looked after their kids, but never felt that a career was an end in itself. To a degree, they spent decades pretending at ambition: doing courses, going for promotions. Because it was expected of them. It’s expected of all of us.
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There is an underlying principle that a career will be the most fulfilling, life-defining thing you will ever do. But common sense tells us this can’t be true for everyone. And that there are many people trapped within this paradigm: by finances, by fear, by habit.
These friends of mine, by the way, don’t spend their time in their pyjamas watching Netflix. Most of the time, anyway. They have all sorts of interests and passions, all underpinned by a sense of freedom. They define the shape of their lives, not a one-size-fits-all job.
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I’m not building up to some announcement here. I’m not planning to give it all up to pursue my long-buried passion to learn the oboe. All in all, I’m pretty content and realise how lucky I am. But there’s always room for adjustment.
When I returned home that night, feeling slightly wistful, Herself was in a similar mood.
Since forever I’ve been talking about visiting New Orleans: partially for the atmosphere and the history, but mostly for the music. I’ve done nothing about it. How about, she suggested, we don’t get solar panels for the house this year and do that instead? We need to have some adventures.
I didn’t answer. But I know I better decide soon. There’s only so much time left.