Exploring Meaning in Retirement

“Finding meaning in life is like learning the alphabet: you start with A for agency, B for belonging, and, eventually, you might get to C for Cause. Just remember that, even if you skip a letter or two, you can still spell “happy.”

— Microsoft CoPilot

After my last article about large language models (LLMs), I decided to give Microsoft CoPilot a go to help me come up with an opener to this Substack post after telling the chatbot what my post was about. A little corny, but not bad!

This post about finding “meaning in life” is a response to another question posed by a friend in his 30s who just had a baby girl! (Congratulations!) He asked me a pretty deep question via iMessage.

I’d love to have you write about purpose. More specifically the perception of purpose and how it changes over time. For example, my assumption is that when you were a tech exec, you dedicated your life to your work because you thought it was your “purpose”. Now, it seems like your purpose has changed.

I feel like people really struggle with trying to find their one true purpose in life. Personally, I don’t think that’s possible. I think it’s more effective and meaningful to try and find purpose in the different phases of your life. 

I wanted to address his question in two parts, much as I did with the doing and feeling aspects of juggling multiple roles in life from a different friend in his 30s. In this post, I wanted to write more generally about my current balance of elements to pursue a meaningful life, and in the next post, I wanted to write about its changing balance through different phases of life.

The ABCs of Meaning

Now that I’m an addict to LLMs, I decided to ask Google Search Generative AI to define the ABCs of Meaning. Here’s what it said:

I’m impressed that Google Search Generative AI appropriately credited Bruce Feiler who has done some good writing on this topic. The basic gist of this concept is that having all of these elements — Agency, Belonging, and Cause can provide people with a well-rounded sense of meaning. It’s not necessary to have all of them at the same time. In the real-world, many people find that focusing on just one or two of these elements at a time can still lead to a meaningful life.

So what happens to retirees?

I have personally had many discussions with retired friends about how life’s meaning can feel diminished in each of these three capacities.

Agency. I wrote earlier in a post with a 2x2 matrix about how some retirees’ happiness can be diminished over the long haul when they felt that society expected them to retire before they were ready. In this context, the retirees lost agency with the feeling that society took away their ability to shape their own lives.

Belonging. I’ll write about this more in future posts, but for many, retirement took away the daily interactions with a set of people who surrounded and connected with them. “Work friends” are an important part of modern life, and losing them at once can take away an important set of relationships. A Harvard study revealed that the No. 1 challenge people faced in retirement was not being able to replace the social connections that had sustained them for so long at work. (Robert Waldinger, the author of that linked article,  is also on Substack!)

Cause. In this context, cause refers to a commitment beyond one’s self. For many, the mission or direction in the workplace provided people with a cause. Collaborating with others, teaching less tenured teammates, and having common goals are difficult to replace in retirement.

In this context, the life changes associated with retirement can feel overwhelming.

Impact on me now

Because I felt lucky to be able to retire early and by choice, I felt I had a lot of agency. The ability to spend time on exploring my own emotions and to work on my relationships has been a joy! The ability to go have beers in the middle of the workday or go out to bars and restaurants on weeknights doesn’t suck either!

I also felt I had a lot of belonging, because several things were working in my favor:

• I was taking this journey with my wife, Marsha!

• Old work friends decided to start involving me in their projects to give me a great transition.

• Portland is so open, and we made new friends quickly. We were also lucky to be able to reconnect with friends from the past, too!

For me, the real trick for ultimate balance in retirement is to find cause. With the definition of a cause involving a commitment beyond one’s self, I haven’t quite found my cause yet. I’ll write more about the exploration, including experience in nonprofits and volunteer organizations. Still, this element remains elusive to me. The good news is that even Feiler confirms here that people throughout their lives may have varying levels of balancing agency, belonging, and cause. Right now, I’m high on the first two and low on the third!

How does this Substack play?

I realized that this Substack is an expression of both agency and belonging. 

Agency is expressed through my posts where I document my own experiences and inner thoughts. In some sense, much of this Substack is like a very public journal. In many of these posts, I am writing what I want to write. Still, I observe that the posts I put the most work into have been the ones that probably had the least readership and commentary. That’s OK, as I am writing these posts for myself, and I am grateful that the existence of an audience holds me accountable to writing them.

Belonging is reinforced by the questions and comments I am getting from friends and readers. While I didn’t originally think I was going to write about something as mundane as health insurance, that post requested by a good friend set the record pretty convincingly for the number of views and offline comments. I see the value in answering the practical questions people pose, as these topics will be ways that I can participate in a community and stay connected with friends, both old and new.

I also very much value feedback. I take very seriously an iMessage thread I had with three really good friends who gave me some really good feedback on the frequency of my Substack.

I launched a poll on my last post, as I indicated I would in that iMessage thread. So far, at the time I am writing this post, I’ve only gotten three responses, so I haven’t yet gotten much guidance. Still, I wanted to act on the feedback.

So, as part of “agency”, I will keep writing my Substack at the same interval, but because I seek “belonging”, I want to give readers the option of reducing the frequency of these emails to once a week.

How can I reduce the email frequency?

If you want to keep receiving these posts as I write them, you’re cool.  You don’t have to do anything!

For those that want fewer emails, I will be splitting my posts into two sections. The main “Retired Techie” section will contain the posts I am writing about for my personal journey for my own agency. Aficionados of vinyl records might call these the “A-Sides.”

The “B-Sides” section will contain the posts I’m doing that I believe others might want to read about — in general the more practical side of the journey which will include “business” topics around industry, investing thoughts, and other career-focused advice.

(As an aside, B-Sides in the old world of vinyl often resulted in hits. As a fan of The Cure, I am particularly a fan of the B-Side of the Killing an Arab single (not available on Spotify in the US!), which was 10:15 Saturday night !)

To select which posts you’d like to receive via email, you can visit https://www.retiredpdx.com/account.

Under Notifications, you can choose to receive only the “A-sides” by turning on only “Retired Techie”. You can choose to receive only the “B-sides” by turning on only “B-Sides.”  Keeping both on (the default) lets you receive all of the posts as I publish them.

My plan is to publish A-sides on Sundays and B-sides on Wednesdays. Even if you unsubscribe from one set of the emails, you can still visit all the posts from the web at https:/www./retiredpdx.com.

Thank you again for reading and joining me on this journey!