The ‘R’ word

Anyone who follows me here knows that I believe that words matter.

Today, some reflections on the use and misuse of 'retired', building on my earlier post: ‘What’s age got to do with it?’

In that article, I shared my experience of transitioning from full-time employment, through a career break, and into freelance coaching at 61.

I explored assumptions around my new status, particularly how friends and others called me ‘retired’ even though I was five years from state retirement age and openly had a new career under development.

I described how tropes around ‘retirement’ had then been hard to avoid. In just one week, I had three people recommend that I go on a cruise.

I noted, too, how age determines what things are called and with what impact. If I had been making these changes at 41 or even 51, I would have been described as ‘taking a career break’ ahead of a ‘mid-career transition’ and achieving a ‘positive work-life balance’ by opting out of full-time, salaried employment. Yet at 61, it’s called ‘retirement’ or ‘semi-retirement’, with telling emphasis on the non-work element. In the career literature, it’s ‘bridging’ ahead of full retirement.

I’ve been reflecting on why this matters, at least to me?

Firstly, ‘retirement’ is a loaded word. Just listen to the negative rhetoric and assumptions about the attitudes and activities of over-55s who left employment in the pandemic.

Secondly, the notion of ‘bridging’ suggests that your full-strength work - your real career - is behind you, and that your current work is somehow less potent.

Relatedly, and importantly, being labelled 'retired' risks casting your serious and dedicated work in a new field as something of a dilettante pursuit to while away the years.

Lastly, when people call you 'retired' and you’re not evidently productive (perhaps because you’re taking time to reflect and set up your new business), you can worry that maybe you ARE retired. Like those dead people in movies who don’t realise they’re dead and keep trying to interact with the world of the living. And this can lead you to doubt the status and value of what you're doing.

These 'R' terms are all valid in the right place. They describe things that people do and many are happy to use them about themselves. In fact, self-definition is the key: you control the definition and the narrative.

But I would rather we didn’t use the 'R' word where it’s not necessary to do so.

And I'd rather we didn’t use age as the basis for determining when to use it.

Instead, let’s use language that presents later transitions as a new start, not the beginning of the end. Like Serena Williams, we might talk of ‘evolving’ rather than ‘retiring’. It’s not loaded; it’s not final. It’s active; it connotes progress.

Yours, in evolution.

Photo: an R carved by my father, who always evolved and never retired