Chapter 5:  You Just Might Find… You Get What You Need

On a warm May day in 1989, I wrote my final exam of my final year in university. Latin 101 (a bird course to fill out my credits while I waited to get my golden ticket into the foreign service). Spectacularly, about two minutes in, I realized that our glorious hippy-dippy prof had based half the exam on Rolling Stones’ lyrics. 

Non semper id quod voles.  You can’t always get what you want (but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need 🎶). 

I remember giggling maniacally in the gym, and then singing in my head like it was the Altamont Speedway concert - through the final stroke of the exam, and all the way down to the sticky velvet sofas of the old Duke of Somerset pub, as the power tune of the last hurrah of my last day of university. 

I think of this song every time I feel myself on the rising wave of a big change in my life. A wistful, yet euphoric personal anthem.  On June 15th - the day that marked one month til my final day of work before retirement - I idled in the Timmies drive-thru, and there it was on my radio. You can’t always get what you want, Tamara (unless it’s the Timbit multipack, in which case, you’re all set).

Life transitions come in different packages. Some announce themselves in big shiny boxes, with bold, type-faced labels: Marriage. Children. A new job. You open these with a sense of occasion, with care, and you make them a centrepiece of your life for years ahead.

Others sneak by you in a rumpled brown paper bag, the unforeseen product of a casual decision, or maybe something you didn’t order at all. It wasn’t what you wanted, but it is what you got.

I chose my university because I tried (and failed) to join the parliamentary page program. I joined the foreign service because I got dumped by my first real boyfriend, and thought that dramatically running away to a far-off land would be a comeuppance. Got engaged two months into dating my future, and soon thereafter ex-, husband because, well, he asked.

Sooo… thoughtful decision-making may not always be my strong suit… but the unexpected consequences of ill-planned life moments have brought me great joy. The incredible friends,  kooky adventures - and indeed, some fairly spectacular post-divorce snogs - are worth every detoured dream and silver-lined swap I have had to make. 

Choosing retirement now, at (not quite) 55, may well be a paper-bag decision - an urge for change that could just amount to the need for a really good nap. The sense of moment comes and goes, feeling more like the heady, concentrated freedom of a grade-11 summer vacation (Let’s steal the car and have the craziest 8 weeks ever!!) than the sober embrace of new - final??! - phase of life. 

And I don’t really know if I will get what I want in this next life transition - mostly because I don’t actually know what I want (aside from that nap. And many cocktails. And - why not? - let’s throw in some snogging). Living my life by the philosophy of the Rolling Stones hasn’t let me down yet, and I am sure that whatever comes next, I will have what I need.

🎸🎸🎸

Chapter 4:  The Money Thing. Sigh. 

Money - financial planning, your savings, a pension if you are lucky enough to have one - is central to retirement. It has to be. And, after health and hot flashes (you feel me, ladies), it’s what’s going to keep us awake most nights.  For me, 4 months away from my official retirement date, here’s what I have figured out about the money thing:

1. I am terrible with money.

2. No matter how reassuring the numbers look, I am legitimately afraid of running out of money when I am retired, and becoming poor and desperate and pathetic.

3. It isn’t really about the money. 

Public servants are not supposed to talk about money (at least not about getting paid). Public service executives, even less so. And diplomats? Eek. I think we are meant to live on the fumes of euphoria from serving the public good. 

Can you blame people, though?  I can’t. Despite the many misconceptions of what government work is like, we are so very - so extremely - fortunate to have the security that comes with a public service career, and especially now in these truly terrible, really just quite shit times for so many people. But you cannot talk about retirement without talking about the money. Your money. My money.  So I’m going to try. 

My money story is simply this: I have worked since I was 17 years old, and have never been without a job… until 4 months from now.  I worked to pay my way through university in all the usual crummy jobs, and then straight into government at age 22.  My dad worked until he died in his 60s - we emptied his office. Our mum is still running a small business at 82. 

If you peel back all the layers of my character (the fascinating creature whose words you continue to read here for unfathomable reasons) - you will find at its core a panicky compulsion to self-reliance. Being safe means counting on only yourself, and that means work. And work means earning money. My DNA does not let me trust in anything else.

Oh, I know how that sounds. Small-minded. Maybe a bit soulless. Irrational? Possibly. 

My panicky, self-preservation wired brain is at fault here. No matter how many times the maths of pension payments, CPP adjustments, RRSPs and tax benefits are explained to me, my untrusting brain scatters the data and locks my synapses in the blinding headlights of a single thought: it can’t be true. You are not meant to be safe. That is for other people - the ones with kindly grandparents who took them on sailboats and hayrides, and showed them how to grow old with grace and comfort. With parents who coached them on savings, and avoiding debts, and didn’t have to struggle to shield them from the shame of goodwill deliveries and food packages that left a permanent blot of embarrassment that has never quite scrubbed off.

So, point #3. It really ISN’T about the money. Clearly…

The irony of planning for my security in retirement, is that I am realizing that it is going to have to be about a completely new value system. If until now work = survival (and vice-versa), then what is the existential formula for retirement?  I suspect that the shocking answer to this lies in the idea of seeking fulfillment, rather than financial sustainability. I also suspect that some people figure that out much sooner I did. Damn their eyes.

But now I am wondering what is the cost of fulfillment. Effort? Experimentation? Enlightenment?

I don’t know yet. But I have a sneaking suspicion that fulfillment is not entirely free. So I had better get smarter about the money thing. Sigh.

💰💰💰