The Ghost of Christmas Future

Yesterday after lunch I began cleaning out my paper files at the office. It was a relaxing, centering, activity. I visualized myself as a ghost from the future--from May 2015, perhaps, a month or so after I'd have retired.

From inside my module I heard Pong negotiating with a program partner on the phone over a speaker scheduled to arrive at the end of the month; she wasn't quite having her way with dates and times and her voice was strained. I heard Nonong explaining a press activity to Craig, who had many questions about arrangements. I heard Marilou briefing an exchange grantee regarding requirements needed for the grantee's travel. I cast my psychic ears farther and listened to other co-workers' conversations about food, weekend dates, favorite colors, and family.

I said to myself, "This is how the office will be after I leave it--people centering their lives around issues and plans I will no longer care about or bother to think of." I thought of all the meetings I'd had to attend, the many contacts whose support I solicited, the rallies in the streets, the work delegated to me because someone was lazy or incompetent and there was no one else to do it, the office Blackberry I had to be constantly attuned to for calls and text messages and e-mail messages at whatever hour of the day and night, the daily commuting to and from work, the rains, the riffraff, the petty office intrigues--and of course people have to be riffraff in order to indulge in petty office intrigues, meaning, there are riffraff in the workplace too.

On March 31, 2015, I can announce to the world, "No more of this!"

Retirement is the true meaning of resurrection. You are finally given the golden opportunity to define yourself, to focus on your own goals, to select your friends, to assert what you like and what you do not like, to determine your mission and meaning to the world and not merely to an office.

It is how you will really live, and how you will die and meet your Maker.