I was talking with a friend the other day about enjoying being in the slow-er lane now that I am retired and my friend said that they weren’t ready to retire yet, that they really enjoyed the fast lane and that there was still so much to do. Hm. To quote that famous line… what we have here is a failure to communicate…
As I’ve seen so many times, we use the same words but specially define them so it’s little wonder we have a failure to communicate. I got to wondering how many times we do this and then discover we are not saying the same thing. Example: the fast vs. slow lane.
To me, the slow-er lane means that I am now in control over my time. ‘er’ means…. most of the time. But no longer does my job determine how I spend my ‘free’ time and my work time. Lane speed has nothing to do with activity or goals or dreams or accomplishments. However, I can see how my use of the word would lead to exactly that interpretation.
But I still have a great deal I want to do. The critical word here is ‘I’. Now, for the most part, I can make the determination of what lane I want to be in and how fast I want to go. Unfortunately, for far too many – being in or being seen as in a slower lane means doing very little or nothing at all. That is not what retirement is all about. But each person needs to discover for themselves what they want from life, what they want to give and how to go about doing both.
