So my new lifestyle begins today--January 5, 2009. I've left my full-time job at the Huntley Library, after ten fine, fulfilling years. I'm "nannying"my three-month-old granddaughter Rosie (Rosetta Bell, if you please) two days a week--Monday and Tuesday for delicious starters to my newly invented lifestyle.
Somehow "fixed income" conjures up images of advanced aging, stooped shoulders, walkers...not at all the way I look or feel...nor do millions of my contemporaries. Can 65 be the new 55 (at least)? I'd like to bargain down to 45, but I'm content.
And "content" is the operative word...a startling new concept to twirl around my day, my psyche, my life. During most of my pre-retirement life, I was the "destination addict" defined recently on an Oprah show about happiness. I always had a future goal, a destination, which I NEEDED in order to be "perfectly happy". Only problem was that when that trip had ended, and I pulled into the station, all was not perfect...I was still stuck with my "excess baggage" ..and the only thing which had changed was my location...whatever destination I had recently acquired: college degree, husband, kids, slimmer body, great job. wonderful house, perfect climate, blah, blah, blah.
It took about 55 years of angst and maneuvering and bargaining with the universe to finally arrive at the generic destination of BE PRESENT FOR YOUR LIFE/LIVE IN THE NOW. I was lucky that I arrived before I had fallen off the earth!
And magic happened around my life---I slowly found joy because I was no longer pursuing it. I started "savoring" instead of gulping...looking instead of leaping...and slowly joy and "right living" came trickling in.
I found the (near) perfect job for me, I returned back to the Chicago area after a fruitless quest for perfection in a distant "nice climate", I found peace of mind in living alone as a widow, my two sons found amazing women as wives, and the past year, the miracle of two incredible(of course) grandbabies graced our family.
And all when I was just enjoying my life instead of forcing it--my life formed around me beautifully even as I just dwelled within it, instead of frantically chipping here, and tweaking there, and mostly sobbing through my days.
We have always been told that money is not the key to happiness, but there I would be, buying a lottery ticket when I felt most down about one of my (pre-library) jobs....yet it is well documented that lottery winners are not all that much happier after they've won. And all those wealthy celebrities who fight to keep marriages and themselves together---it never really made any sense.
I'm starting to think there's something to that idea that we shape our own lives by the very way we live it and view it.
Was it always that simple?
