“Are you ready for retirement?” I asked myself that question last week at my dad’s retirement reception. Of course I’m not ready for retirement. Unless someone drops a couple of million into my bank account, it will be years before that day arrives in my life. But, preparation for retirement begins long before actual retirement. The question, “Are you ready for retirement?” has to be asked with a measure of urgency, and the sooner the better. In a sense, we have to get in the retirement mode, which is difficult for most of us. Someone said it like this: “When you retire, think and act as if you were still working; when you're still working, think and act a bit as if you were already retired.”
When we fail to plan for retirement we plan to fail in retirement. This past year millions of Americans awoke on their retirement day with some sobering news: apart from either government assistance or family support, they do not have the resources to survive their retirement years, much less enjoy the fruit of their labor. For thousands, this is the direct result of the 2009 financial collapse; for others, simple negligence is the cause.
The truth is, less than half (43%) of Americans have calculated how much they will need to retire. I’ve learned it’s much more than I thought. One reason it will take more than many anticipated is because of the simple fact that we are living longer. The average life expectancy in the US was 72.6 years in 1975; by 2007, it had increased to 77.9. For many people who will live into their 80s, 90s, and even 100s, this means they will be retired longer than they worked, says Carl Macko, CFP, president of Synergy Capital in Smyrna, Georgia. But there are other reasons, according to Forbes.com reporter Lisa LaMotta. Adult children can have money problems, which can quickly drain the parents’ financial resources. In addition, health care costs and taxes, inflation, and home repairs are all potential problems just waiting to absorb your retirement fund. Financial advisors, I hasten to add, strongly recommend not touching retirement savings to address these unexpected situations.
But, the question still remains, “Are you ready for retirement?” Let’s suppose I did win the lottery, and won millions. Would I be ready for retirement? We can have all our financial “ducks in a row” and still be “sitting ducks,” unprepared for what awaits us. Our inner lives will not suddenly be different at retirement than now. A good retirement begins with a good today.
Each today leads to another tomorrow; each day is filled with whatever we choose to put into it, which is the condition for what we receive from it. How we live each passing moment will bear the fruit we will eat in later years.
The day after Dad’s retirement reception, Dad, my two brothers and I, met for coffee. I couldn’t help but overhear a worker say at mid-morning break, “I just can’t wait for this day to be over.” I understand, I’ve had days like that. But then again, I wondered if that was her life, one day at a time.
The retirement reception for Dad was outstanding. My sister-in-law, Joy, had been there to make it happen. All I had to do was show up, and then at the close, help Dad up the steps. It was there, holding his hand, that I caught his smile again, and as he glanced my way with that smile, it was quite suddenly early Saturday morning, December, 1962. I could feel my dad’s steady hand lifting me into the air between steps as my seven year old feet, striving to keep in step with his fast pace, were lifted by the strength of his arm. Hurrying alongside Dad, left hand warm in my coat pocket, right hand secure in his, I was afraid of missing the moment, in this case, arriving at Art’s Boot Shop before he closed at noon, anxious as I was for a new pair of Christmas cowboy boots. And in that moment, looking up at Dad, I felt his smile, as he too anticipated what lay ahead.
Now on this day, 45 years later, as I slow my walk to match his hobbled, uncertain ones, I embrace that same smile, grasping the adventure of walking together. Retirement day is only the culmination and continuation of life’s crooked, meandering, and thrilling uphill climb. The walk is as much the adventure as the arrival. And retirement is just another step in the mystery of this life we live, even as it reminds us of our boundaries, our limitations, and our expiration date.
Life Matters by David B. Whitlock, Ph.D., is published weekly. You can contact David @ drdavid@davidbwhitlock.com. or visit his website, davidbwhitlock.com.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Thursday, June 17, 2010
“Al and Tipper: After all those years, Smash!”
Barney Fife is steaming, once again. In an effort to make Barney suffer for having taken her for granted, (“I’ve got that little girl right in my hip pocket,” he boasted), Thelma Lou goes out with Gomer Pyle. Barney is nonplussed; then he is completely unglued, and Andy Griffith comes to the rescue. Trying to calm Barney down, Andy first asks, “Barney, is anything wrong?
“Wrong?” Barney sarcastically responds. “Just that everything’s gone smash, that’s all! We’re all through, Thelma Lou and me. It’s all shot. It’s all come to an end. After all these years, smash.”
You can’t help but wonder if anyone ever asked the Gores that question, “Is anything wrong?” It seemed to us, on the outside looking in, that the question needn’t be asked. After all, theirs was the placid, stable, almost boringly steady marriage, solidly anchored in a love that safeguarded them in the turbulent sea of American public life, while the marriage of their counterparts, the Clintons, was rough, unsteady, stormy, and seemingly adrift. Yet, the Clintons are still “Together,” while the Gores are “Split.” This doesn’t mean the Clintons necessarily had or have a better marriage than the Gores; it only means the appearance of “better” is no guarantee of endurance.
“This is very much a mutual and mutually supportive decision that we have made together following a process of long and careful consideration," the Gore’s email said.
Does the Gore’s breakup spell trouble for baby-boomer marriages? Does their separation signal a new trend for late-stage marriages? The fact is, even under the best of circumstances, marriage has always been a precarious institution because the people who enter into it are so often unpredictable, subject to the emotions that make them who they are: sometimes passionate, sometimes passive, often careless. Not every picture perfect marriage is what it appears to be, once you step inside the picture frame.
Let’s face it: no marriage comes with a warranty, not even, as with the Gores, after forty years, four children, and three grandchildren. When someone stops paying attention, eventually the relationship goes “smash,” more often with a silent “smash,” or in the words of T.S. Eliot, “not with a bang but with a whimper,” so that the news, when it finally comes, surprises and shocks, as if it were something that happened that day and not as it is, a death that occurred long ago.
Maybe the Gores are causalities of love’s slow fade, where love itself is taken for granted and once taken for granted, assumed, then ignored, and finally, missing. Like sandcastles on the seashore, swallowed by the retreat of each outgoing tide, so love can be eroded by neglect and strewn across the sun bleached beaches of moribundity, desiccated by apathy. Multiple factors---sometimes money, sometimes differing values, sometimes a lack of interest, sometimes someone more exciting or just different---serve to gradually pull two people apart until they awake, and upon discovering themselves strangers to one another, decide getting reacquainted is too much effort. Saying good-bye becomes as antiseptic and dull as the marriage itself, “a mutual and mutually supportive decision that we have made together following a process of long and careful consideration."
Do I hear a yawn? Apparently, the Gores did for quite some time.
How then can you make love last in a marriage? Before his death on June 4th, Hall of Fame basketball coach John Wooden was asked that question. Not only was he the greatest college basketball coach in NCAA history, winning 10 national championships, including seven straight (1968-1973), Wooden also had a successful marriage to his wife, Nellie, who died in 1985 after 53 years of matrimony to Coach Wooden. Until his death, he would write his deceased wife a love letter on the 21st of each month and gently place it on her pillow. So, what was his key to making love last? “Only one way,” he said. “Truly, truly, truly love. It’s the most powerful thing there is."
I take it from the repetition of the word, “truly” that he meant: genuinely, consistently, devotedly, wholeheartedly.
Wooden’s degree of love for Nellie is extremely rare. For most of us, living love day in and day out is much easier said than done. But it is possible, especially when it truly is love. And when it comes from the heart, truly, and is more than empty words, it’s right, so very right, even if we get it just right only now and then. After all, the adventure is in the striving.
So, “Is anything wrong?”
“No, Andy, everything is right, just right.”
Life Matters by David B. Whitlock, Ph.D. is published weekly. You can visit David’s website at davidbwhitlock.com or email him at drdavid@davidbwhitlock.com.
“Wrong?” Barney sarcastically responds. “Just that everything’s gone smash, that’s all! We’re all through, Thelma Lou and me. It’s all shot. It’s all come to an end. After all these years, smash.”
You can’t help but wonder if anyone ever asked the Gores that question, “Is anything wrong?” It seemed to us, on the outside looking in, that the question needn’t be asked. After all, theirs was the placid, stable, almost boringly steady marriage, solidly anchored in a love that safeguarded them in the turbulent sea of American public life, while the marriage of their counterparts, the Clintons, was rough, unsteady, stormy, and seemingly adrift. Yet, the Clintons are still “Together,” while the Gores are “Split.” This doesn’t mean the Clintons necessarily had or have a better marriage than the Gores; it only means the appearance of “better” is no guarantee of endurance.
“This is very much a mutual and mutually supportive decision that we have made together following a process of long and careful consideration," the Gore’s email said.
Does the Gore’s breakup spell trouble for baby-boomer marriages? Does their separation signal a new trend for late-stage marriages? The fact is, even under the best of circumstances, marriage has always been a precarious institution because the people who enter into it are so often unpredictable, subject to the emotions that make them who they are: sometimes passionate, sometimes passive, often careless. Not every picture perfect marriage is what it appears to be, once you step inside the picture frame.
Let’s face it: no marriage comes with a warranty, not even, as with the Gores, after forty years, four children, and three grandchildren. When someone stops paying attention, eventually the relationship goes “smash,” more often with a silent “smash,” or in the words of T.S. Eliot, “not with a bang but with a whimper,” so that the news, when it finally comes, surprises and shocks, as if it were something that happened that day and not as it is, a death that occurred long ago.
Maybe the Gores are causalities of love’s slow fade, where love itself is taken for granted and once taken for granted, assumed, then ignored, and finally, missing. Like sandcastles on the seashore, swallowed by the retreat of each outgoing tide, so love can be eroded by neglect and strewn across the sun bleached beaches of moribundity, desiccated by apathy. Multiple factors---sometimes money, sometimes differing values, sometimes a lack of interest, sometimes someone more exciting or just different---serve to gradually pull two people apart until they awake, and upon discovering themselves strangers to one another, decide getting reacquainted is too much effort. Saying good-bye becomes as antiseptic and dull as the marriage itself, “a mutual and mutually supportive decision that we have made together following a process of long and careful consideration."
Do I hear a yawn? Apparently, the Gores did for quite some time.
How then can you make love last in a marriage? Before his death on June 4th, Hall of Fame basketball coach John Wooden was asked that question. Not only was he the greatest college basketball coach in NCAA history, winning 10 national championships, including seven straight (1968-1973), Wooden also had a successful marriage to his wife, Nellie, who died in 1985 after 53 years of matrimony to Coach Wooden. Until his death, he would write his deceased wife a love letter on the 21st of each month and gently place it on her pillow. So, what was his key to making love last? “Only one way,” he said. “Truly, truly, truly love. It’s the most powerful thing there is."
I take it from the repetition of the word, “truly” that he meant: genuinely, consistently, devotedly, wholeheartedly.
Wooden’s degree of love for Nellie is extremely rare. For most of us, living love day in and day out is much easier said than done. But it is possible, especially when it truly is love. And when it comes from the heart, truly, and is more than empty words, it’s right, so very right, even if we get it just right only now and then. After all, the adventure is in the striving.
So, “Is anything wrong?”
“No, Andy, everything is right, just right.”
Life Matters by David B. Whitlock, Ph.D. is published weekly. You can visit David’s website at davidbwhitlock.com or email him at drdavid@davidbwhitlock.com.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
"It Breaks Your Heart"
Angelo Bartlett Giamatti, former President of Yale University and before his untimely death in 1989 at the age of 51, the 7th Commissioner of Major League Baseball, said of the game he loved, “It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart.”
Anyone who watched the replay of Armando Galarraga’s elation in that split second when he rightly assumed he had pitched the perfect baseball game---only the 21st perfect game in baseball history, the first 28-out perfect game, the first perfect game for a Detroit Tiger pitcher--- anyone who watched him rise to baseball heaven in that ecstatic moment, anyone who winced in sympathy with his pain when an umpire snatched him from it in an instant, pulling him from the joy, pushing him to the agony, and all because of a botched call, anyone who watched the replay where perfect was called imperfect, flawless declared flawed, faultless found blemished, anyone who watched the wry smile on Galarraga’s face at the realization of the loss, anyone who saw the tears of personal disappointment on umpire Jim Joyce’s face upon admitting he made an enormously inexcusable mistake, anyone who viewed that historic scene would agree with Giamatti, “It breaks your heart.”
And that’s why I love baseball.
Baseball is life, really. Not in the sense that it in itself gives us a meaning, a purpose, or a reason for living. Rather, the game of baseball mirrors so many of life’s realities: it is completely fair and subject to an umpire’s mistake; it’s frequently dramatic and often mundane; it’s intense and relaxing; it keeps you on the edge of your seat while you wait and wait for something, anything, to happen; it’s a game in which many are overpaid and more don’t earn enough, a game where a player’s mistakes might be published daily and his perfections forgotten in a moment; it is a sport that displays the spoiled rottenness of some and the graceful compassion of others. Just like life.
And that brings me back to pitcher Armando Galarraga and umpire Jim Joyce. Joyce, who is by no means an incompetent, made a mistake. Until he saw the replay, he was convinced had made right call. As soon as he recognized he hadn’t, he headed to the Tiger’s clubhouse to apologize, requesting to speak personally with Galarraga. Joyce then publicly apologized with sincere sympathy for Galarraga: “I took a perfect game away from that kid over there who worked his (*#*!) off all night.” And Galarraga graciously accepted. “He really feels bad, probably more bad than me,” he said. In a public display of forgiveness, the next night Gallarraga presented the lineup card to Joyce at the beginning of the game. Both shook hands. Then, Joyce wept.
This baseball episode will be a favorite rerun more for the authentic and spontaneous exhibition of compassion and forgiveness in the leading characters’ roles than for the missed call or the perfect game.
And isn’t that like life when lived as it should and can be? What we give in love, kindness, and forgiveness is what endures. We often make mistakes, sometimes enormous ones, publicly. And it’s embarrassing. But, every now and then we get it all together at just the right moment. It’s perfect, beautiful. But it only takes one person who mistakes a work of art for the mediocrity of an amateur, and the hopes, dreams, and aspirations of the artist can die in an instant. And sometimes the artist and judge are one and the same: ourselves. It’s then, when we, the judge or the artist, must do what Joyce and Galarraga did: admit our mistake and extend the hand of forgiveness, knowing in our heart that when we pitch the perfect game, no one can take it away, even when no one recognizes it for what it truly is, even when no one recognizes it at all.
And that’s life. It breaks your heart. It’s designed that way.
Anyone who watched the replay of Armando Galarraga’s elation in that split second when he rightly assumed he had pitched the perfect baseball game---only the 21st perfect game in baseball history, the first 28-out perfect game, the first perfect game for a Detroit Tiger pitcher--- anyone who watched him rise to baseball heaven in that ecstatic moment, anyone who winced in sympathy with his pain when an umpire snatched him from it in an instant, pulling him from the joy, pushing him to the agony, and all because of a botched call, anyone who watched the replay where perfect was called imperfect, flawless declared flawed, faultless found blemished, anyone who watched the wry smile on Galarraga’s face at the realization of the loss, anyone who saw the tears of personal disappointment on umpire Jim Joyce’s face upon admitting he made an enormously inexcusable mistake, anyone who viewed that historic scene would agree with Giamatti, “It breaks your heart.”
And that’s why I love baseball.
Baseball is life, really. Not in the sense that it in itself gives us a meaning, a purpose, or a reason for living. Rather, the game of baseball mirrors so many of life’s realities: it is completely fair and subject to an umpire’s mistake; it’s frequently dramatic and often mundane; it’s intense and relaxing; it keeps you on the edge of your seat while you wait and wait for something, anything, to happen; it’s a game in which many are overpaid and more don’t earn enough, a game where a player’s mistakes might be published daily and his perfections forgotten in a moment; it is a sport that displays the spoiled rottenness of some and the graceful compassion of others. Just like life.
And that brings me back to pitcher Armando Galarraga and umpire Jim Joyce. Joyce, who is by no means an incompetent, made a mistake. Until he saw the replay, he was convinced had made right call. As soon as he recognized he hadn’t, he headed to the Tiger’s clubhouse to apologize, requesting to speak personally with Galarraga. Joyce then publicly apologized with sincere sympathy for Galarraga: “I took a perfect game away from that kid over there who worked his (*#*!) off all night.” And Galarraga graciously accepted. “He really feels bad, probably more bad than me,” he said. In a public display of forgiveness, the next night Gallarraga presented the lineup card to Joyce at the beginning of the game. Both shook hands. Then, Joyce wept.
This baseball episode will be a favorite rerun more for the authentic and spontaneous exhibition of compassion and forgiveness in the leading characters’ roles than for the missed call or the perfect game.
And isn’t that like life when lived as it should and can be? What we give in love, kindness, and forgiveness is what endures. We often make mistakes, sometimes enormous ones, publicly. And it’s embarrassing. But, every now and then we get it all together at just the right moment. It’s perfect, beautiful. But it only takes one person who mistakes a work of art for the mediocrity of an amateur, and the hopes, dreams, and aspirations of the artist can die in an instant. And sometimes the artist and judge are one and the same: ourselves. It’s then, when we, the judge or the artist, must do what Joyce and Galarraga did: admit our mistake and extend the hand of forgiveness, knowing in our heart that when we pitch the perfect game, no one can take it away, even when no one recognizes it for what it truly is, even when no one recognizes it at all.
And that’s life. It breaks your heart. It’s designed that way.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Will My Dog be in Heaven?
People sometimes ask me if their dog will be in heaven. My short answer is, tongue in cheek, “Heaven? Yes. Hell? No!”
I do believe dogs will be in heaven, but since they are not capable of making moral decisions, hell is not an option. It is only by God’s mercy that dogs, or humans for that matter, will be in heaven. Now, before you protest that mercy is reserved exclusively for humans, since only they are responsible for moral decisions, let me explain.
In the first creation account in Genesis, animals were placed under the care of humans. In time, because of humanity’s disobedience, so the story goes, God brought judgment on the earth in the form of a worldwide flood. When God spared Noah and his family, they took animals on board the ark. Animals, incapable of choosing right and wrong, were by God’s mercy, spared. God’s plan for a renewed earth obviously included animals, and I suppose my two Schnauzers’ ancestors were on board then.
But that’s not all. Apparently, God’s plan for a new earth, or kingdom, or heaven, includes animals as well, if you believe the Hebrew prophet Isaiah, who foresaw a new heaven and earth where, “The wolf and the lamb will feed together. The lion will eat hay like a cow.” This harmonizes nicely with the Apostle Paul’s belief that “all creation has been groaning” under the curse of the fall and “eagerly awaits” complete deliverance. “All creation” would surely include animals. (My Schnauzers raced through the house, over and under the furniture, in rapturous joy after I sat them down on my lap and shared this thought with them.)
Of course, some scientists and philosophers scoff at all this as nothing more than poppycock. They maintain that dogs, for example, are nothing more than “social parasites,” which means our canine friends have learned to mimic certain human behaviors, ingratiating themselves to us so that we love them, mistakenly thinking they “love” us. Dogs need us for food and shelter and this explains why they, in the evolutionary course of nature, have attained this ability, and raccoons, rats, and squirrels have not: the latter creatures don’t need us for survival as dogs do. (I reminded my dogs how much they needed me just the other day as I chased them down the street and from under the skirt of an innocent neighbor at her mailbox).
But, this misses the point. Just as all creation “groans,” and not just those at the higher rung of God’s evolutionary ladder, so all will be released from the “curse.” And we could assume then, that the qualities of God would be reflected in his creatures. As Randy Alcorn notes in his book, Heaven, “Once the Curse is lifted, we’ll see more attributes of God in animals than we’ve thought about.”
All right then, that explains why, when I first let my Schnauzers out of their crate in the morning, they can’t wait to lick me right smack dab on my nose: those aren’t the kisses of a “social parasite,” training me to feed them and let them outdoors; those are drops of God’s love, teasing me towards the anticipation of better things to come. So, when I get home tonight, I’m going to rub my dogs’ tummies, trust that God’s Word is right and throw in with Will Rogers, who said, “If there are no dogs in heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.”
Life Matters, by David B. Whitlock, Ph.D., is published weekly. You can visit his website, DavidBWhitlock.com or email him at drdavid@davidbwhitlock.com
I do believe dogs will be in heaven, but since they are not capable of making moral decisions, hell is not an option. It is only by God’s mercy that dogs, or humans for that matter, will be in heaven. Now, before you protest that mercy is reserved exclusively for humans, since only they are responsible for moral decisions, let me explain.
In the first creation account in Genesis, animals were placed under the care of humans. In time, because of humanity’s disobedience, so the story goes, God brought judgment on the earth in the form of a worldwide flood. When God spared Noah and his family, they took animals on board the ark. Animals, incapable of choosing right and wrong, were by God’s mercy, spared. God’s plan for a renewed earth obviously included animals, and I suppose my two Schnauzers’ ancestors were on board then.
But that’s not all. Apparently, God’s plan for a new earth, or kingdom, or heaven, includes animals as well, if you believe the Hebrew prophet Isaiah, who foresaw a new heaven and earth where, “The wolf and the lamb will feed together. The lion will eat hay like a cow.” This harmonizes nicely with the Apostle Paul’s belief that “all creation has been groaning” under the curse of the fall and “eagerly awaits” complete deliverance. “All creation” would surely include animals. (My Schnauzers raced through the house, over and under the furniture, in rapturous joy after I sat them down on my lap and shared this thought with them.)
Of course, some scientists and philosophers scoff at all this as nothing more than poppycock. They maintain that dogs, for example, are nothing more than “social parasites,” which means our canine friends have learned to mimic certain human behaviors, ingratiating themselves to us so that we love them, mistakenly thinking they “love” us. Dogs need us for food and shelter and this explains why they, in the evolutionary course of nature, have attained this ability, and raccoons, rats, and squirrels have not: the latter creatures don’t need us for survival as dogs do. (I reminded my dogs how much they needed me just the other day as I chased them down the street and from under the skirt of an innocent neighbor at her mailbox).
But, this misses the point. Just as all creation “groans,” and not just those at the higher rung of God’s evolutionary ladder, so all will be released from the “curse.” And we could assume then, that the qualities of God would be reflected in his creatures. As Randy Alcorn notes in his book, Heaven, “Once the Curse is lifted, we’ll see more attributes of God in animals than we’ve thought about.”
All right then, that explains why, when I first let my Schnauzers out of their crate in the morning, they can’t wait to lick me right smack dab on my nose: those aren’t the kisses of a “social parasite,” training me to feed them and let them outdoors; those are drops of God’s love, teasing me towards the anticipation of better things to come. So, when I get home tonight, I’m going to rub my dogs’ tummies, trust that God’s Word is right and throw in with Will Rogers, who said, “If there are no dogs in heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.”
Life Matters, by David B. Whitlock, Ph.D., is published weekly. You can visit his website, DavidBWhitlock.com or email him at drdavid@davidbwhitlock.com
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