Where am I at? Sitting at my desk on a comfortable and mood-appropriate rainy Sunday morning, I ask myself this question.  Thunderstorms rumble in the distance, creating a sound that almost seems like voices having this conversation with me.  For it is Day 3.  The first day that I have written. What is day 3?  It is the so-called question above: Is it the beginning of the end, the end of the beginning, the beginning of the beginning, or the end of the end?  Day 3 is my third day of what has been a wonderfully and thoughtfully overly celebrated so-called retirement. I call it so-called, as it is just that, it is what we call it – retirement.  According to the Oxford Dictionary, retirement means:  The leaving of one’s job and ceasing to work. To me, that sounds more like the definition of death, not retirement.  Does the leaving of one’s job have to go hand in hand with the ceasing to work?  I’ll go along with the leaving of one’s job part, but it should further be added, after a long career of routines including waking early, commuting to and fro the place of business, paperwork and projects outside of working hours, dreaded Monday mornings, childcare arrangements, family vacations at the most expensive times of the year, emails that just keep coming, text messages related to work, meetings, new computer programs, data, deadlines, and the never ending sleepless nights of hoping that you make enough money to pay your current bills as well as building that nest egg for retirement.  The second part of the definition, ceasing to work, causes me both humor and fear. I chuckle as I consider how one ever ceases to work. I return to the dictionary to see how work is defined.  It states, work:  an activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result.   If that’s the case, I’ve been employed since I was born!  Think of the mental and physical effort of a newborn, toddler, and child, figuring out who and what is in this new world around them. They must learn to sleep, eat, crawl, potty train, walk, talk, read, write, work with numbers, communicate their needs, and socialize with others. These are probably the most important mental and physical efforts done in order to achieve a purpose or result – yeah, survival.  It frightens me that retirement is defined as a ceasing of work, for I define it more as a revision of the type of work one does.  The connection between childhood and this “ripe old age of 65” (bullshit), is what that thunder outside my window is softly trying to tell me.  “Remember before you had to work to get a paycheck, remember when you were a kid and you loved to paint, loved to ride your bike, loved to work in the garden, loved to cook and bake, loved to sit and watch the ocean,  loved to play?” it asks.  Taking the paycheck aspect out of it, it is all still work – an activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result. 

Back to my original question:

The beginning of the end: A true oxymoron. Perhaps in a book, or in this essay, I am writing the beginning of the end, but this leads me to think what is truly an end. Is there ever an end or only beginnings?  Let’s take this further, if I end my career by walking out the door, isn’t the sheer act of walking out that door a beginning? The end is rather just a part in the middle, if one so chooses to have that mindset to never consider it the end. The end of the beginning, I buy into this one.  There is an end to a beginning, for example, the end to a beginning of a vacation, a season, a school year, or a job.  The beginning of the beginning: Ah, the bright and sunny one! This is the one, as we get older, we must force ourselves to see.  For example, when I started college at what I thought was a very mature age of seventeen, this time in my life was definitely viewed, no additional thought necessary, as the beginning of the beginning. It was the beginning of a whole new chapter, with new characters, new settings, and new learning.  At my current, what I think is a very mature age of sixty-five, I need to put additional effort into this philosophy and make it part of a daily affirmation: “This is the beginning of the beginning, the beginning of the beginning, the beginning of the beginning, … ”

Then we come to the end of the end.  When I walked out those doors on the last day of work, it was the end of the end, or rather the end of the ending. And when something ends, doesn’t something else begin? It has to, for there is no true ending; there are only beginnings. To quote the metaphor, when a door closes, a window opens, I find it both optimistic and coincidental that I sit looking out an open window. Although there are thunderstorms brewing outside, they are gentle, and remind me that they will end and a new sky will begin.