For many, leaving a career and moving into retirement proves to be a - - PDF document

For many, leaving a career and moving into retirement proves to be a much more difficult transition than expected. In the past civilisations, to guide and empower those transitioning into a new life stage, tribes throughout the world performed Rites

• f Passage experiences. This 'journey' reoriented individuals towards successfully

adapting to and accepting the responsibilities of their next life stage. The goal of the presentation is to provide a vision of how walking the Camino can transform an individual from a vibrant working life into a retirement of renewed purpose, contribution and vigour. (October 2018) The next stage of evolving this vision is through the creation of a self- use Companion Guide to help the newly retired who plan to walk the Camino as part

• f their own transition into retirement. The guide is being compiled and plans are

now being set for us to walk the full 500 mile Camino Francés between 21st September and 31st October 2019 to pilot its contents. We are now looking to select 12 independent retirement walkers who are walking at the same time and who would be willing to use the Companion Guide to provide feedback. We also plan gatherings at four points along the way for shared ritual, teaching and conversation. Should you wish to apply to take part, please contact Adam Wells on info@discoverthecamino.com. 1

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I want to start with the story of my wonderful mom. She mothered us into

• adulthood. She was devoted to us. I asked her a few weeks ago “When do you

consider the best time of your life?” She instantly replied “When we lived on the farm in Nebraska and you kids were young.” Now she is in a “living center” in Tulsa. She is in relatively good health. My sister lives within blocks and sees her many times a week, I live 4 hours away, and see her 3-4 days a month. My sister in Minnesota gets down at least three times a year, but it’s not enough. She is lonely. She is surrounded by 60 other wonderful residents, but sits in her room alone because she doesn’t know them, and thinks they don’t care that much. She wants her kids. She spends a good amount of time being depressed and wondering why the Good Lord hasn’t taken her home. 3

• After years of looking forward to retirement, you can be surprised and shocked

that your retirement expectations aren’t being met. You’re then left wondering if the best, healthiest and happiest years of your life are now over with nothing left to live for.

• What does the retirement satisfaction data show?

A 2016 Employee Benefit Research Institute report compared earlier studies and they showed:

• There are almost always 10% of retirees that are NOT AT ALL SATISFIED with

retirement,

• just over 40% were MODERATELY SATISFIED in retirement and
• just under 50% were VERY SATISFIED with retirement.
• But look at the trend, back in 1998, the VERY SATISFIED percentage was 60.5%

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• This is Maria.
• She’s 84 years old and some of you may have already met her. Her house is just by

the Camino path as you descend into Logroño.

• Each day Maria continues the tradition that her mother, Doña Felisa, started in

1980; that of welcoming passing pilgrims by stamping their Credencials with the beautiful inscription of ‘Higo – agua y amor’. Figs – water and love. Maria demonstrates the other side of retirement – a retirement filled with meaning, purpose and service. 5

• So, if you are going to be lucky enough to live to 90, then you could be spending

20-30 years in retirement.

• Unlike childhood, adolescence and adulthood, society today has no road map, no

age related norms or structured patterns to guide us through this emerging stage

• f longevity.
• Retirees are stepping into uncharted territory. During your careers, you may have

developed extensive skills, assumed outstanding responsibilities, gained huge amounts of knowledge and life experience however the arrival of retirement may for some of you feel like life it is stepping off a cliff and into a bottomless void.

• With this extended lifespan, retirement today demands that you try to answer

life’s bigger questions if you are to find happiness and fulfilment in this new stage

• f your life.
• If you’re not accustomed to self-reflection, the action of looking within one-self

can be a terrifying prospect and a very difficult to do without any help. 6

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• If you leave retirement to chance, you most likely will follow somebody else’s

retirement journey.

• As you get closer to retirement, you may receive your ‘Call to Retirement’. These

are the deeper questions that arise from within you about what to do WITH the time you have available in retirement.

• Questions like:
• how will I organise my life in retirement?
• how will I relate to family, friends and the community?
• how will I spend my money?
• how will I manage my time and talents
• This ‘Call to Retirement’ is a reminder that with every ending comes a new

beginning.

• Retirement is an invitation to step into the next stage of life called ‘Elderhood’.

• For thousands of years, Elderhood has had an honoured role in the history of the

human family. However, the role of elder, at least in the West, has not been tended to or been supported for centuries.

• Today, you don’t automatically see elderhood fully within the defines of the

retirement description.

• If the elder hasn’t become extinct, at the very least, it has been on the Endangered

species list.

• What happens to the species when only 6 birds are left
• we have to keep them in captivity to protect them.
• their migration schedules and routes are disrupted
• feeding patterns are lost and predators are forgotten.
• How can they return to their full life, when the culture of the flock

in the wild is lost or forgotten?

• In many respects the Elder and elder energy has been lost in it’s natural state.

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• The quadrated circle, also known as a mandala, is recognised by many cultures

around the world as a symbol of wholeness. In terms of human development, it represents life cycle stages of childhood, early and late adulthood and elderhood.

• Every life stage offers its gifts. In childhood, we find learning and play provides the

most joy. In adulthood, it’s productivity and reproduction.

• What’s elderhood? Because we live in a youth obsessed and ego centric society,

you may not even be aware there is a life stage called Elderhood.

• We’ve become so accustomed to seeing individuals who are so intimidated by the

potential loss of their adult powers and adult privileges that they spend all their energies trying to ‘hang on’ to the status quo when they should have called it a day years ago.

• It means that many, many, many people will go to their deaths having never

discovered and enjoyed the powers and pleasures found in the Elderhood stage of life.

• Becoming an elder means to leave behind adulthood and to live life with levels of

maturity that go beyond your adult years.

• Elders most enjoy life when they shift their focus and share their knowledge and

experience in the form of wisdom.

• Just because you have reached a certain age does not mean you will automatically

become an Elder. There are 45-year-olds who have the wisdom and comportment

• f an elder whilst there are 70’s year-old’s still living in adolescence.

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• The good news is that Elderhood is beginning to emerge from this extended era of

dormancy.

• With self-awareness and intelligent choice you can become an elder.
• You may lack a sense of what Elderhood might look like.
• We have guides:
• We can turn to isolated communities where a vibrant elderhood is still

integral to being human

• We can study the past when the culture of elderhood was strong.
• We can discern the needs of the human community at this moment in

history

• We can consider the gifts of old age and seasoned veterans of life
• and we can all figure it out together!

Elderhood can be resurrected using the ancient patterns and the ways of our forebears. 10

• Transitions between 2 life stages are psychologically traumatic for the individual. It is

a death and rebirth experience providing both loss and gain.

• I am sure all of you have heard of Rites of Passage to mark transitions between life

stages

• These were practiced throughout the entire paleolithic world and were

remarkably similar in very diverse, isolated human communities.

• The rites were shaped to appropriately align the individual within the universe

so that individuals passing through transition didn’t get lost, self destruct or waste away.

• They made use not just of teaching and conversation (words)but ritual, silence,

solitude, art, music and motion.

• In the old world, particularly before agriculture and before the urbanization of the

human community, the rites of passage facilitated the transition from youth to

• adulthood. Then, as now, the passage was at least awkward, if not painfully difficult.
• For the survival of the individual as well as the tribe, in a wild world, the child must

give up the childish ways and become a man or woman. Young people were exposed to danger to wake them up. And some children died. The tribes accepted the tragic loss in light of the huge risks of allowing their children to remain immature in a dynamic and demanding world.

• Consider our own familiar tragedies of addiction, violence, suicide. These rites of

passage guided young people as they negotiated the pivotal time in their life. 11

• For some reason, even today, life maps seem to have a shelf life of around 20 years
• In prehistory, human life normally lasted 40 years, for most people there was one

map exchange, the transition from youth to adult

• We live today nearly twice as long as paleo peoples
• it is very common today for people to make it to 80 years and beyond,

making for additional periods of stability and transition/crisis

• need to replace maps a couple more times
• visceral crisis of mid-life,
• and the transition we are addressing today, the entry into

elderhood

• when we consider:
• children are living their own lives
• friend and family starting to die
• less energy for accomplishment, less need to accumulate
• retirement: health issues, depression suicide common
• need new patterns for entering elder hood
• we need to be reborn/transformed

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• I mentioned how the mandala or quadrated circle of four phases represents
• wholeness. The circle is also linked to describe qualities of the natural world

including the lunar calendar, the seasons of the year, the cardinal directions, the major life archetypes of the lover, the warrior, the magician and the King/Queen.

• The transition into Elderhood in retirement is represented by the North cardinal
• sign. The spring, summer and autumn periods of your life have all been

experienced and winter now beckons. Winter in the north is cold and and it takes skill, fortitude, competence, knowledge, endurance, intelligence and strength to thrive and survive in this place.

• With King and Queen wisdom and through their service to the community, the

elder as leader, teacher, parent, protector, nurturer helps the community to survive and prosper.

• You may not want to leave behind Adulthood and transition into Elderhood. The

discomfort and grief that you will feel as you leave behind the old familiar world may threaten your very self and way of life.

• A rite of passage can help you because it acts as a catalyst to begin the

transformation journey; NOTE: it is never a necessary requirement in order to successfully progress between two life stages.

• Rites
• Assist in letting go of your attitudes, behaviors, self-concepts from the

previous life that won't serve you or your community in a new role as elder

• Guide you in identifying and strengthening a new sense of vocation skills,

wisdom, personal resources and connections for you or your communities

• Provide social and psychological support from family and the community to

help you adopt your new elder status. This perhaps would not have happened otherwise. 13

• A question to ask yourself when you retire is: Who am I when my warrior energy

and work are gone, when the heroics of my working life are over?

• The process of transition into Elderhood may take months, even years. It may

begin long before work-life ends. As no two people are the same, neither are two passages into elderhood the same.

• Virtually every rite of passage has had three phases
• Separation : detachment from an earlier stable state; from the old life

stage/status

• Transformation
• intervening time of transition, ambiguity, vulnerability
• none of the attributes of the past or coming state
• the individual has no indeterminate status
• Reintegration, aggregation, re-aggregation, or reincorporation
• the consummation of the passage
• the ‘passenger’ is in a relatively stable state once more
• has new rights and obligations and the new status is taken
• n
• is expected to live according to the new status

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• The time and space apart is called liminal (betwixt and between, you are neither

here nor there)

• Israel, left Egypt-wandered in the wilderness-entered promised land
• The young person
• left the world as he/she knew it (died to the old self)
• entered a time and place of mystery, uncertainty, perceived danger, change

and spiritual power

• and then be returned transformed to the community (born again)
• The ancients recognized a major and essential transformation between childhood

and adulthood and they offered guidance to those making the journey

• Not all, but a good part of whether we live a good elderhood is not a 'roll
• f the dice"
• Now, we hope to show you how walking the Camino can be a

transformative Rites of Passage into Elderhood. 14

When you close your front door to head off to Spain and the Camino, you are entering the healing ground of ritual. 15

• This first stage of the Camino is where we are a child and beginner again in life.
• In the language of Joseph Campbell (author: The Hero With A Thousand Faces) you

will face tests, encounter allies, confront enemies, and have to learn the rules of this Special World. You need to find out who you can trust, earn allies, a sidekick may join you, or an entire Hero team can be forged.

• In this stage, you must prepare yourself for the greater Ordeals that have yet to

come and you need to test your skills and powers, or perhaps seek further training from a Mentor. The Initiation into the Special World also tests your commitment to the Journey, and questions whether you are able to succeed.

• Your first test is to handle the separation from home; leaving behind your ordinary

world. 16

• When we begin walking that first day over the Pyrenees, what we carry on our

back is not a just a backpack for the Camino. What we are carrying on our back is

• ur ‘BACKPACK OF LIFE’ – our real and imaginary needs for the Camino journey

and everything else that we carry ‘inside us’; the good, the bad and the ugly.

• Work is good for you as it provides 5 basic needs which you immediately

lose upon retirement

• You have to focus on how to replace those specific needs if you are to

continue moving forward.

• Also carry into retirement our successes, failures, hopes, desires, unmet

dreams which may impact how you adapt to the retirement stage of life.

• Also carry into retirement our thinking which doesn’t always serve our

purpose: imaginary needs, fears, doubts, behaviours, habits

• To successfully transition into retirement means ’lightening the load’ and

‘unpacking the rucksack’ - letting go. 17

The first loss is financial remuneration

• Regular salary, bonus and perks are all gone
• No longer are you a ‘breadwinner’
• Potential loss of ‘lifestyle’ as live of pension/savings;
• A terrifying thought made worse by the fact we will be living longer

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• Second loss Daily Routine/Life Structure
• Work manages your time and schedule
• Lack self-direction to make own plans and decisions, you will not live your
• wn retirement
• If you lack self-direction for making your own plans and decisions, your activities in

retirement will be externally led by the agenda of others. 19

• Socialisation
• Work is social; provides a sense of belonging, friendships and camaraderie
• Unable to replace relationships and social aspect, retirement can lead to

isolation and depression 20

• Identity & Status
• Work over time can begin not to only define what you do, but also who you

are

• May find it impossible to let go of your career achievements and sense of

status your old job provided

• If you can’t reinvent yourself and continue to live in past within a narrow

definition of yourself, you’ll never fully become who you really are 21

• Life purpose
• If you’re in the right job, work provides meaning and purpose.
• Get to see your value to society as you recognise somebody is willing to

pay for your services

• Not finding new meaning and purpose in retirement ultimately means you

stop feeding your soul. Instead of doing what will make you happy and fulfilled, you may find yourself filling your time with a multitude of distractions and entertainments.

• This can ultimately lead to depression.

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• Everything we love in life, we will lose.
• Any significant loss in life can creates grief.
• A rite of passage such as the Camino offers you:
• a holding space and safe place to descend into the depths of your sorrow

to find its release

• an extended period of time to fully grieve for your losses

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• Fully letting go of the loss is central to elderhood and personal maturity.
• Staying present in your adult self is key in your times of grief. It is important not to

regress back to adolescent behaviour to cope with the loss. By doing so, you are undertaking the hard work of maturation – a requirement to step into the realm of elderhood.

• As an elder you are able to walk through the harsh winter snows and turn your

sorrow and loss into something valuable for your community.

• How do you learn to let it go?, Be present/recognize the pain, approach it

gently, with curiosity, hold it tenderly, let it be If your pain is not transformed, it will be transmitted, in one way or another

• The Pieta, Mary just simply holding the pain
• refusing to project it elsewhere, blaming or hating others
• Letting evil/suffering/human tragedy work it’s havoc on us
• until it brings us to compassion, patience, forgiveness and freedom
• serious, life and death, danger, no nonsense
• your life is passing away
• feelings of vulnerability, fear, loss, confusion, hope
• this is not a deed done by us, inner work is the work of The Force

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Story Part 1 I’ll now tell you a story. Once when I was walking to Finisterre, I met a French Canadian lady who recounted me the story of her first Camino. Her husband died suddenly when she was 66 and bereft she went off to walk the Camino from Le Puy to Santiago de Compostela. She described the walk from France and into Spain – her separation stage as ‘HELL’. She was crying everyday. She could not imagine life without her husband. As far as she was concerned her life was over. She couldn’t see a future for herself however she continued to stumble on towards Santiago. 25

• You’ve been walking now for 10 – 12 days.
• You, the Hero of your journey, have made mistakes and learnt the lessons.
• You have received help and advice and faced the challenges that have come your

way.

• Wine country and the regions of La Rioja and Navarre are behind you. The

landscape has changed from mountains to rolling hills and vineyards to an open, arable landscape.

• You are now leaving the city of Burgos, to begin your entry into the high central

plateau of Spain called the Meseta. 26

• You can only mature by entering an altered state.
• The endless walking, sun, rain, wind, blisters, tendonitis, thirst, tiredness, hunger,

uncertainty of a bed for the night, exhaustion, snoring all changes you physically and psychologically.

• With the excess comforts removed from your life you find yourself connected to

the bare essentials and necessities of your life.

• In the open, calm and silent Meseta, you find the time necessary for recognition

and reflection, of self- encounter, purification and maturation.

• You are able to meet and have a conversation with your soul, listen to your inner

wisdom. 27

• Nudged by the spirit, you are able to peer into your shadow and innermost cave.
• It is important to see who lives inside battered, withered, hungry and alone.
• We can get to know more deeply our unfinished business and what we’re still

carrying in our life’s backpack. 28

Types of unfinished business.

• entitlements
• resentments
• regrets
• fears
• attitudes (we are valued for what we can do, etc.)
• beliefs that are too small for real life
• acquiring identity and meaning from our work
• the need for respect, importance, virility
• financial growth and accumulating possessions

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• In the middle of the Meseta, the Camino crosses the river Pisuerga.
• The river has always been a border and in earlier times it was the frontier between

the ancient kingdoms of León and Castile.

• The Itero bridge was constructed on the orders of King Alfonso VI in order to

celebrate a new era of reunification between the two kingdoms.

• Throughout the ages, alchemists considered that the walk to the Itero bridge

represented the death of an earlier spirit and upon crossing the bridge, a renewed spirit could grow on the remainder of the journey to Santiago de Compostela.

• This river is your ‘river of full-existence’, a reminder that you have more to reveal

to the world.

• If you never step outside our comfort zone again in your life, you will never be

more than you are today.

• Before you can take the green light to cross the bridge, what work of maturation

work do you still need complete? 30

• With the green light to elderhood, you cross the Itero bridge and into the Tierra de

Campos – the Land of Fields – a vast and fertile landscape.

• The wildness of nature on the Meseta, the local inhabitants, the stories from

fellow pilgrims allow you to gain fresh perspectives and be open to new beginnings.

• In the endless space, from within yourself new patterns of thinking emerge and

the act of ‘letting go’, like breathing, slowly becomes a ‘non-act’. You are consciously invited to let things be: Your scarcity mentality, Your judgements, Your partiality, Your certitudes

• That’s why the eclipse of sun or moon is a powerful symbol of the Rites of Passage.

They are unbelievable, counter intuitive, utter surprise.

• As you advance, your new openness allows your world to change which may

simply be an awareness that you are now ‘RETIRING TO’ ‘something’ as opposed to RETIRING FROM work. 31

• Shortly before the end of the Meseta, you arrive into the city of León, world

famous for its magnificent cathedral.

• The 13th century cathedral was built as an interpretation of the then changing

world.

• The Romanesque style of architecture was passing away in favour of the Gothic

style

• Gothic was based on the new theological ideal that: “God is light and it is in his

light that man finds the truth”.

• With nearly 1,800 square metres of stainglass windows, Leon cathedral delivers

the message that ‘light has come into the world’. 32

• The representations that appear on the stained-glass windows create a dialog

between the worlds of the visible and the invisible, the outer and the inner, the manifested and the non-manifested.

• Elders authorize new elders, handing over the mantle, like Elijah authorized Elisha

with his mantle.

• Elders help guide you to find your awe, wonder and light. They help you to
• find who you truthfully are, your authentic self.
• use your gifts and limitations to face the future with confidence, trust, faith
• create your elderhood to be a time of deep fulfillment

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• At the highest point of the Camino, at the top of the Leonese mountains, standing

between heaven and earth, you arrive at a great pile of stones, a wooden pole and an iron cross – the Cruz del Ferro

• In Pagan tradition, those who passed by had to throw a stone onto the pile. The

Romans called these mountains the ‘Mountains of Mercury’ - the god who protected travellers and people on foot.

• Today, pilgrims walking the Camino carry a small stone from their homeland to lay

down at the Iron Cross; a symbol for something significant in their life. 34

Story Part 2 The French Canadian lady stumbled on towards Santiago. She could not imagine life without her husband. Whilst she crossed the Meseta, she said she suddenly stopped walking and just fell to her knees. She had had this sudden realization, an epiphany, that her late husband was not her life. He was simply just part of her life, just as she had a life before him and now she must create a new life after him. He had given her 40 wonderful years of marriage and 3 children and she was blessed with these as

• gifts. She called this stage of her Camino as ‘Death’ as it was at that moment she

had finally ‘let-go’ thinking that her life was over because her husband had died. 35

• You’ve now completed two-thirds of the journey to Santiago.
• You’ve walked through the regions of Navarre, La Rioja, Castile and Leon; through

wine country and across the vast Meseta plateau.

• The final third of the journey through the green and forested landscape of Galicia

region remain.

• This final stage is re-integration/re-incorporation, contemplating the return home,

action with new renewed spirit. 36

• In elderhood, your role is not to wither and die on the vine. Maturation allows you

to become a fine wine.

• Whilst you walk through the fertile landscape of Galicia, you too reflect upon your
• wn inner landscape. No doubt, you’ll see that over the years, you have planted

many seeds, some of which have come to fruition and borne fruit and some of which haven’t because of a lack of care and attention.

• Which purpose and passion fruit seeds have you previously planted in life or have

never planted at all? Now, is the time to plant them again, to give them all your love and attention and let nature do its work through patience and trust. 37

• Statue of Alonso III Fonseca archbishop of Santiago de Compostela 1507-1523.
• By the time you reach Santiago de Compostela, you hopefully have become a wise

elder of walking the Camino.

• You perhaps will have started to experience the some of the gifts that elderhood

has to offer:

• Released all the pieces of yourself that were hidden away during your

responsible adult years

• You feel energized to become the person you always wanted and felt you

were made to be; responding generativity to a new calling/vocation

• You have moved from a place of ‘doing’ to more of ‘being’, moving from

projects to presence (contemplation), developing a wider vision (sage) Wisdom

• You become open to change, accept and surrender fully to life’s ever

number of growing losses; the real hero’s journey is the journey of surrender

• You live life beyond your ego moving away from self-focus, to more social

and community contribution and finally to a greater spiritual/cosmic connection as life draws to a close. You are needed more for a presidential spirit, non-anxious presence, joy, faith, confidence 38

• For pilgrims of past ages, the reality of arriving at the Santiago Cathedral was a

symbol of arrival at the Heavenly Jerusalem; a culmination of their lives and of their union with God.

• Today, the experience of arrival continues to be of the deepest significance: silence

and prayer in the cathedral, meditation on the figures of the Portico de la Gloria are ways of expressing hope for your return home and reincorporation back into your community.

• We have to bid our farewells to fellow pilgrims and take the ‘pilgrim journey that

leads back to our front door’.

• Danish Philospher, Sorem Kierkegarrd said: ‘Life can only be lived forwards but

understood by looking back’.

• Similarly, by stepping into elderhood you can turn your memories into meaning.

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• Early Elderhood: usually active:
• healing life’s wounds
• releasing old baggage
• developing spiritual connection
• nurture vision, passion and a sense of purpose
• working for wholeness in the community
• the ritual of getting rid of things, cleaning out photos, memorabilia
• declutter, but also review
• Later Elderhood: usually less active
• Simpler
• prepare for final transition/passage
• entering more and more into the realm of mystery
• inner work to leave this life peacefully, cross the threshold with an

unburdened soul

• Death
• obituary page, Final Passage, ship on the sea, being carried, good death,

not perfect, but good (Ilse, not every note was perfect, but the spirit) 40

• It’s not just the old folks that are being offered transformation, but the entire

human community.

• the future depends upon an awakened global elder community
• the planet needs more than a course adjustment.
• Full-bodied elders in community are given a mission
• Rites of Passage is an articulation, punctuates the longer process of transition into

elderhood

• many places in life have the potential to guide our passage
• death of a loved one, illness, natural disaster, recovery from addiction
• Advantages of participating in the Rites of Passage before retirement
• It prepares you for the disjuncture, for the psychospiritual

disturbances that the life change will bring.

• Advantages of going after
• Probably the best time is when you think of it, or become aware of

the need 41

Story Part 3 The French Canadian lady entered Galicia. With a new state of mind she allowed herself to be creative around where her life would take her next. She realised that she wanted to help underprivileged children in third world countries and she would do this by spending as much time in their communities. By the time the lady reached Santiago she had decided she would sell most of her possessions and her house to fund the trips overseas and that after her Camino she would live very simply. She went back to Canada, did as promised. For 8 years now she had been travelling backwards and forwards to Latin America helping children. She felt truly blessed that she could do this and it made her very happy. The third stage of the Camino she called ‘CREATION’ 42

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