When I am approaching my seventieth birthday, I am surprised to recall my career, defined in the broadest sense, as a student (under 33 years old!). Then a doctor and consultant, as well as a real estate developer, and more recently, as an author, publisher, and keynote speaker. Today, in my “early retirement”, I was as busy as ever, scouring with problems and opportunities, and not just lying on the beach, enjoying the life of leisure.
The key question might be: What is the ideal retirement life? How can you make a reasonable choice about how to spend time, energy, emotions and money in golden years? Being a lifelong student of science, religion and philosophy, I decided to address these Socratic issues and answer them, returning to other ancient Greek philosophers for wisdom and advice.
Plato, the Greek philosopher (424 BC-348 BC) wrote in Republic that a better life is the life of philosophy, rational thinking and reasoning. The life he defined was one of contemplation and leisure, in Greek eudiamonia best translated into modern English is not just like happiness, but as prosperous. He noted that you need to have assets (money) and a safe place to live in order to enjoy such a life.
Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC), a student of Plato for 20 years, agreed with his teacher regarding the basic concepts of contemplative life, the pursuit of perfection and merit ( aête ), in one life. However, he felt that this should not be a life of leisure, but one of the actions, activities ( ergon or function) in one of the world. His position is well defined and supported in his Ethics Nikomacha , also showed that in many other areas of life, besides just philosophy, one can enjoy eudiamonia literally translates to "good demons."
When I reached the age of 57, in 1995, I received an early retirement due to some health problems that could shorten my life. I have enjoyed decades as a student, with a degree in chemistry and bible, MD from Cornell University, a residence for pathology at the University of Vermont, and also as an employee of the epidemiological intelligence service at the CDC in Atlanta. Perhaps due to some clerical error, at the age of 33, I was chosen as the chief of pathology at the medical center in Maine and co-founder of Dahl-Chase Pathology Associates. I survived, even succeeded and succeeded in the “trenches” of group medical practice for 25 years, and also advised, lectured and career in commercial and industrial real estate. In this process, I gained knowledge and even experience in the world of leadership and critical leadership skills, strategic thinking and planning.
When I retired, I soon realized that I had married the baggage of too much education, too many interests, too many opportunities and too much money to just live a peaceful and blissful contemplative life. The big problem was to choose which specific projects would require my time, energy, emotions, and money (my favorite abbreviation TEEM). But again, I was an experienced strategic planner, so this project should be very easy, both short-term and long-term, since I can live longer than I expected.
I easily dropped the practice of medicine, giving up my medical license. Yes, I spent a lot of time and money on these skills, but I was absorbed by him for 25 years. I have never been held accountable for malpractice, so why do I need luck? It was easy to leave the practice that bore my name, because I designed the enterprise as a flattened hierarchy, maximizing synergy, equal sharing with all partners in the group. Nevertheless, I maintained my contacts with key medical societies, in which I united and shared my wisdom and stupidity with younger doctors. It is time to retreat to become a mentor to pay off my debt as a trustee. It was very nice and enjoyable.
With the departure of a medical career, my real estate commercial / industrial career has surfaced, as have my property in a small construction company and distributor Overhead Door Co. for half the state of Maine. As in the medical group, I shared the property with key managers, so again I could easily get out of these businesses. It was a euphemistic kind of slow “garage sale” to get rid of real estate.
The scientist has always been given full access to the seminars, mainly in writing, and courses on tapes and compact discs. After retirement I became an even more ardent drug addict practitioner and plunged into philosophy, psychology and religion as a student and teacher. Being sent to my parent's home country in Norway for the summer when I was 12 years old (to take me away from the “bad influence” of my friends), I always had Viking lust in a style but without classical rape and looting, of course. As a result, I combined my new world of scholarships and foreign travel and added my life in pursuit of high-altitude mountaineering, a kind of mountain madness with an element of class.
My life took a strange detour on October 23, 1999, when I had just finished a seminar on Optimize your life! Single-page strategic planner in Portland, Maine, and climbed the mountain. Washington, New Hampshire for the weekend to go camping and enjoy the late autumn. Unfortunately, on Saturday morning there was a little rain, and the clouds caused depression in the valley and rose above the mountains. My hiking buddies gave up the joy of the day hiking in the rain, so I went to Rabbi Tuckerman's solo and then climbed the left slope to the alpine garden along my route, taking a trip to the highway and home.
When I got up, light rain turned into giant snowflakes. This winter wonderland has replaced a gloomy autumn day. I was lured into a bright winter hike and continued for more than an hour, despite the marked increase in wind. Then the “white” conditions made me stop next to a huge pyramid (a bunch of rocks marking the trail) to wait for the storm. I climbed into my aluminized tivi bag and realized that I had a cell phone with me. I made a series of increasingly annoying 911 calls that made me wonder if my rescuers would come, let alone find my location.
When the snow accumulated on my bivin bag, I began to worry that my rescuers would not see me, so I slowly pushed me to the surface of the snow and opened the end of my burlap to appreciate my changing world. Unfortunately, the wind filled my bag and, despite my efforts, tore it from my body. Now I’m in the autumn tourist gear in an area known as the “home of the worst weather in the world” (April 12, 1934 wind speed: 231 miles per hour).
On this long night, with wind speeds of up to 98 miles per hour, when I was waiting for salvation, I had time to contemplate past life. I made six promises that I would keep if I was saved: to be insensitive criticism of my anger, to get rid of real estate, to correct my first wife and son, to get rid of unnecessary things, “things” in my life, communication with people from my past and, above all, just my life. What would you think might have promised, since you were faced with the inevitable death?
Sometimes I gave up hope and just waited for death. However, around midnight, my rescuers found me, took me from the mountain to the regional hospital to treat frost wounds, severe hypothermia and rhabdomyolysis (muscle splitting due to voluntary and involuntary muscle flexion in an attempt to prevent / treat hypothermia).
Shortly after my discharge from the hospital, Gusson College in Maine invited me to share my experience and what I learned. My presentation was entitled:
"Lessons for life from the mess in Washington" offered three instructions, advice from near death:
1) Be ready to die!
2) Have a plan to live!
3) Do it now!
This presentation was recorded and broadcast on the National Public Radio in New England, and I was invited to share my story at several venues for performances. About a year later, the Training Channel persuaded me to rehabilitate myself on a mountain. Washington, and as a result of worldwide broadcasts, my new career has increased dramatically in conversation, and most of the lessons were presented in it. Supported by Mark Victor Hansen Chicken Soup for the Soul a series of books, I write the accompaniment of "Book of Accidents" and completed Optimize your life! a book that combines personal and organizational strategic planning. This book has become an international bestseller with the worldwide Spanish translation of Random House, the world's largest publisher.
One simple but deadly journey lured me into the dynamic world of keynote speeches, as well as publishing, as if outside of my historical world of medicine, in which I had so much formal education and experience. This world of deadlines, promises, and challenges has become as severe and demanding as the practice of medicine. What happened to my peaceful contemplative retirement?
When I work on all my six promises, I focus on the most difficult ones to simplify my life, I remember my days in Benares (Varanasi), India, on the Ganges, when I saw hundreds of older Indian men at this stage of life, so well defined in hinduism, ascetic, sadhu or sannyasin There is a denial of ordinary life and all that it means, in exchange for the search for the attainment of moksha, the liberation from the cycle of samsara, the reincarnation. Although a person can enter this stage of life at any time, usually an elderly person brings up his family, completes his entrepreneurial activity and completely retires. This can lead to an extreme form of complete abandonment of the duties and responsibilities of households in the previous stages of life. It may include the rejection of religious beliefs, which even burn religious texts.
Sanyasins become wandering hermits living without any shelter or property. They eat when they can buy food, but never enter into any work to acquire it; it must be given or found. They become holy people striving for spiritual enlightenment and power, seeking to attain the true wisdom of the cosmos. Wow It is easy to determine, but a bit extreme. However, all of my five other promises would simply be eliminated.
A less dramatic approach can be described by the psychologist Abraham Maslow in his Hierarchy of needs that describes a person's motivation and the resulting behavior, determined by those, is necessary. I could focus on the highest level, self-actualization and go beyond life and just find one “vocation” and listen to it.
But what is the only vocation? I decided that I would get rid of the property in an orderly manner and complete the successful planning of my business enterprises. However, I would have kept my family life and continued to write, speak, and travel on a more limited basis. High mountaineering can end in the end, I am approaching the age of 70, which is much higher than the ideal age of such a risk.
As the author of the monthly newsletter, I included a new list in my January 2008 issue. "10 things I want to do before you die" and realized that I was far from Plato - the ideal life of contemplation and leisure. I think that this year I will travel, enjoying the life of Aristotle in active contemplation, fully aware of the advice of the Buddha against driving, but in favor of life at the moment.
When I close this essay, I have to recall and share a few paradoxes, irony, even absurdities:
At the end of it Nicome ethic (Book 10, Chapters 6-8). Aristotle is sitting to cancel himself and fully support Plato, noting that the contemplative philosophical life of leisure is the best.
Buddha, addressing life to death, composes a poem, which speaks about the value, expediency of driving in one life:
Every day a bird on my shoulder asks:
Today is the day?
Are you doing all you have to do?
Are you who you should be?
Plato said that the purpose of philosophy is to prepare for death.
