I was teaching a workshop last week at which someone mentioned her dislike of the word “retirement”. I feel as if I’m being put away, she said, as if I’m meant to go away and hide until I die, as if I’m becoming invisible.
As an older woman, of course there are ways in which she’s right about the invisibility, though some find it liberating. And she’s also right that the etymology of the word ‘retirement’ is about withdrawal, retreat; in both the military and spiritual sense to retire means to pull back or pull away, to refocus one’s energies in a safer and more secluded place.
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