Bashing into joy
Willie Mays has always been my favorite baseball player. He could hit for average and power, steal bases, catch every ball that came his way in centerfield, and throw like no one else. He loved playing baseball, and he played with the childhood joy that was forever captured in his immortal nickname, the “Say Hey Kid.”
In fact, it was said of Mays that the only thing he could not do on a baseball diamond was stay young forever. Mays played too long after his skills had declined, and the joy was harder to find. Those last years were not kind.
We’re all the young Willie Mays early in life, believing we can chase down fly balls forever.
Yet dropping an identity without a real sense of where the new path may lead is seriously scary stuff. After all, leaving a career takes certain hopes and dreams out of our lives, probably forever.
When one has to make a decision to let go of a workplace, there can be a big difference between understanding what’s necessary intellectually and owning that choice through emotional acceptance. Retirement is the classic head/heart decision.
But owning and even embracing the realization that our time here is limited, unpredictable and sacred can help us live well.
“The paradoxical reward for accepting reality’s constraints,” Oliver Burkeman notes, “is that they no longer feel so constraining.” The sooner we accept that fact, the sooner we can live the only life we have more fully.
When it came to retirement, my father taught us not to be defined by our jobs. He was proud of his career as an engineer, yet he retired in his early 60s and easily moved on. Tom Brown enjoyed life. Every day was a new day.
After more than four decades in the nonprofit world, I decided 2019 was my year to follow Dad’s example. It was a scary decision and involved letting go not just of the perception of control but of dreams. So I hedged my bets, described the step as “not quite” retirement, and took what I called a gap year.
During that time, I wrote, consulted for nonprofits and led heritage tours. My first trip in this new role was to Japan, an endlessly fascinating part of the world.
I found I enjoyed researching and crafting stories that fellow travelers would find of interest. I started reading outside my comfort zone, discovering indigenous writers, fungal networks, immigrant perspectives, beavers, liberation theology and so much more. I began reading with curiosity and wonder. With a sense of awe. “The beginning of awe is wonder,” wrote Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, “and the beginning of wisdom is awe.”
Mary Oliver’s recommendation to writers — “Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” — had become my North Star.
Yet I still self-described myself as “semi-retired.” Being employed somehow remained at the core of my existence. It can take months or years after we’ve crossed the intellectual threshold to finally accept those decisions emotionally. When I’ve made a choice but haven’t fully owned it, life seems out-of-whack.
Ironically it was only at someone else’s retirement party that I took the plunge, finally telling friends my life consisted of exploring the world I’d missed during the decades I was a busy nonprofit executive.
Now I read, travel, have conversations, write essays and give lectures, all of which have led to a new appreciation for the diversity and wonder around me.
Unwrapping and sharing those discoveries with others brought me joy. Some never lose their childhood curiosity. I’m reclaiming mine.
No longer semi-retired, I have a new life description: I am bashing into joy. I’m discovering new worlds while diving deeper into things I love. The sum of traditions, memories, myths and associations connecting people and place over time — history’s soul — remains utterly fascinating. I find joy in sharing these personal and collective explorations in essays and lectures.
Letting go, whether it’s the loss of a career, relationship or long-held expectation, can bring a sense of transience and fragility. But there are other ways to look at letting go. We can lose to find, give away to gain. We may be making room for something more wonderful.
But letting go is hard. “Disappearance,” Kathryn Schulz writes, “reminds us to notice, transience to cherish, fragility to defend. We are here to keep watch, not to keep.”
Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it. And when we let go, we find there truly is more to come.
To read more of David J. Brown’s writing, visit moretocome.net.
