When I finally retired, bloodied but not completely bowed, after 52 eventful and even tumultuous years in the sugar industry, a passage from Shakespeare naturally came to mind. It was the famous “All the world’s a stage” speech from As You Like It: “One man in his time plays many parts/ His acts being seven ages.”
Which age, I wondered, had I now entered? Ominously, according to Shakespeare, it looked as if I had slipped, after the hurly-burly, quietly into the sixth age – that of slippered pantaloon relaxing with spectacles on nose – which is unnervingly close to that last Shakespeare age of all, the one which ends this strange, eventful history in “mere oblivion, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”
Surely Shakespeare has got it wrong, I thought. I don’t feel all that like a slippered pantaloon, though admittedly I dare not venture onto tennis or squash courts these days. But on the whole there seems a lot left to do. I don’t want to put on my slippers just yet.
Fortunately, Shakespeare has been substantially updated by Peter Laslett, a fellow of Trinity College from my old university, Cambridge. Peter Laslett has redefined Shakespeare’s seven ages into four: childhood and schooling; work and raising the family; active independence; and, lastly, dependence with dignity. That sounds more like it to me. Now I can look forward to the best age of all, the age of “active independence.” This can be defined as beginning at retirement from full-time employment and ending, if reasonable fitness can be maintained, at 80-85. That leaves me a good little stretch of time before entering, one hopes, that serene last age of dependence with dignity. This should give some opportunity to redeploy whatever talent, experience, enthusiasm and capacity for enjoying life I may still possess.
There are dangers, of course, and drawbacks. One is bound to be nervous about leaving the institutional cocoon and having no structured day. I have always immensely enjoyed doing nothing, so I have to worry that I might get to enjoy doing too much of nothing too often. I hope that I am able to avoid that temptation. Another danger to avoid like the plague is to get to thinking that the wisdom and judgement one has supposedly gathered over the years entitles one to go around telling people “Listen to me, I’ve been around and this is how it should be done.” A fatal mistake, as even a fleeting glimpse at what the last forty years of wisdom and experience has done to Guyana should conclusively prove. Let a new generation apply its new solutions, I must keep reminding myself.
So how, exactly, should one put to use this precious time now suddenly and wonderfully available, this third age of “active independence,” as Peter Laslett puts it.
I remember an old friend of my father’s, Frankie Warnford, Director of Agriculture in Antigua, who on the morning of his fiftieth birthday, the first possible date of his entitlement, claimed early retirement and for the next 35 years cultivated his garden, collected books, entertained his friends and in his beautiful home, Yeptons, overlooking the ever-changing Antiguan sea, lived in placid contemplation of life and literature to the end of his days. So many countless, quiet days, happy in himself, he saw:
the match of the first star
through the door of sunset always left ajar.
And turned the pages of his latest treasured book and found contentment.
A seductive solution. But not, I think, for me. I feel more active than that. At the least I want to write books, not just read them – though, I have to admit, there is more than enough lovely reading left to do to last a hundred lifetimes, much less through just the third and fourth ages of just one life.
On the other hand, I don’t want to remain too active and deeply involved in new commitments filling the days just as one’s career filled the days for so long. After all, this should be a new departure, not the same as before in a different form. At a minimum I want more time to think seriously and write seriously – if I have, which is very doubtful, the real staying power for the demanding, lonely business which serious writing is. Whatever happens, this third age is going to be an interesting time. Part of the challenge will be sorting out a satisfying routine.
In a recent Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary a new word made its appearance. It is ‘Torschlusspanik,’ from the German of course, meaning ‘Panic at the thought that a door between oneself and life’s opportunities has shut.’ It is what too many people feel on ending a long career. More appropriate to my circumstances, I like to think, is its very opposite, though I haven’t been able to find the word for it in the OED: “Satisfaction at the thought that a door between oneself and life’s new opportunities is just opening.”
