Head Space
Image from: PriceisRight.Fandom.com
“What do you do with all your time?” they ask, as if somebody gave me some extra, like a bonus spin on the Price is Right. I know what they mean when they ask, though, and while my insides are always smirking, I hope my mouth isn’t as well. What the curious really want to know is, “Now that you have retired, how do you spend your days?” (And yes, I’m not a fan of the word “retired”, though it does by definition mean “to leave one’s job”.) I have all kinds of answers to the question—however it comes out--in a can inside my mind. And all of them are true. But time isn’t really the prize you get when you jump off the hamster wheel. (Though everybody thinks it is.) Head space is the gift.
Sometimes when you’re in the middle of a thing, it’s hard to know how crowded it is inside your head. Noise feels normal. The cacophony becomes so commonplace you don’t even notice it. Like a waitress who works in a smoke-filled bar, it’s just part of the air you breathe. So you don’t realize what you don’t have—all that’s hidden in the fog and toxic accumulation, all that’s being smashed or drowned out or buried alive. You just go. And do. And go and do. And go and do some more. Until you don’t have any idea that you can’t hear your voice or feel your gut. All you do is bounce around like a ping pong ball off the clutter in your brain.
Several years ago, we took our college team on a foreign tour to Greece in late summer before the start of school to play against the Greek National Team in a series of friendly games. The Greeks were so good—older, extremely skilled, and so different in regard to how they approached the sport. It was a basketball education for all of us inside the lines. But we learned a lot, too, outside the lines while there. Our team did all sorts of amazing things like eat dinner atop Mt. Lycabettus, walk around the Parthenon, and stand on the summit where Paul shared the gospel- the rocky surface of Mars Hill. Things that make you see the world in a different way than however you saw it before you were there. Things you don’t get over when you get on a plane to fly back home.
But what I remember most vividly about the trip to Greece was a little island called Hydra that we took a day trip to across the Aegean Sea. The village was a postcard looking place of piles of white-on-white houses with hot pink bougainvillea trailing around cobalt blue front doors. It was idyllic. As we wafted toward it on our giant boat, it felt like we were headed toward a movie set. Then we stepped off onto the dock and it was as if we had walked through an invisible curtain to another place and time. It took a bit to come to terms with how differently it felt. For a moment, it seemed like something weird had happened to our ears.
Then a local filled in the gaps. Motorized vehicles are not allowed on the island of Hydra. Mules can act as a taxi if you need them to, but mostly people just walk. And they talk. And the birds sing. And music plays. And dishes clank. So it’s not quiet. But there is no background noise. The sounds of life are set against a backdrop of silence-- like an auditory green screen that makes everything pop. It’s odd how clearly you can hear when the white noise is turned off.
When you stop doing a thing that you’ve done for a long, long time-- a thing that the external world identifies you by perhaps— the immediate question the world has when you stop is, “What’s next?” It’s as if the expectation is that when you jump off the moving train, you do so to grab another as its crossing, like we see on all those old westerns where the tussle just continues from car to car to car. It's a fair question. (One that is a tremendous compliment, in fact.) But it’s one a lot of doers wrestle with because they honestly have no idea. And something is, for certain, next. Retirement doesn’t mean you die.
One of the gifts of head space—retirement’s hidden gem--is the room it gives you to hear what you think and notice what you feel. And that’s where the answer to the monotonous “What’s next?” question lies.
In the newly afforded space to wander, you start to pick up on how you really want to live. You learn to recognize what suits you best…the pace you most enjoy, the optimal rhythm of your days. Decisions, once you feel the beat, are clear and easy to make. In a sense, you do what Stephen Covey long ago told us we should: “Begin with the end in mind,” and then work backward as you go. Ironically, I did that a lot in my job. With my program, with my staff, with my teams…beginning with where we wanted to end up was how I made our plan. I’m not sure why it seems so foreign to do that with our lives.
We live in a world consumed by scaling. Every concept, idea, project, or business is run through that iron sieve. Will it scale? How will it scale? What if it won’t scale? And yet nothing really matters less if the life you ultimately want, happens to be the life you already have. The really important questions remain: what do you want your life to feel like? What do you hear when you tap your foot to the rhythm of your days?
Head space is the gift that gives the answers. A free and easy feeling that’s just a skosh more everyday than peace. A lovely place to land when you jump off the moving train.
Sherri Coale