Retirement V Post-retirement - Lessons from Beyond

Lessons from beyond? No, I have not died. Engaging in séances? No, not that either. Not necessarily even messages from The Creator, although there may be some of that in the reflection that follows. If you have been reading some of my other recent postings on this blog, you will realize I am talking about retirement.

I have written two postings with the word 'blues' in them related to retirement. I want to address two subjects in this regard that are somewhat related to some of the content of those previous postings. This was triggered today when I was part of a large team interviewing a prospective candidate for a position in the Department of Psychiatry from which I retired over 18 months ago.

One of the three candidates we interviewed today for three different positions was in many ways a top-notch candidate when it comes to academics, intelligence, seemingly keeping up with literature and doing a good job of thorough clinical care and documentation. However, he was really seemingly at a loss to answer a question about what he did or envisioned doing beyond his clinical practice. This is something I have seen before and in the cases of some clinicians, the outcome has not been good. It is all good and well to devote yourself strongly to your career, but not at the loss of, for example, your family.

The third candidate we interviewed today seemed to have a better understanding of that. Both of them referred to having a spouse and children, but the latter one made specific reference to having learned about balance and having to give his family time.

There are two things I wanted to highlight as a result of this. The first is that young physicians, but people entering any career really, need to also look at this issue of balance. This is important not only in terms of giving proper due to the personal relationships in your life. It is important to cultivate some recreational pursuits. Some of us have interests that we seem to be born with or have acquired early in life that we want to have time to pursue. Others of us need to work at this. This is not only important in terms of having something to which you can turn to in order to not burn yourself out prematurely by giving your all to your work. It is important so that you do have something to help sustain you when you have no work or when your career has come to an end.

I served for a time on a committee involved in interviewing prospective medical students. We always asked them questions related to this whole idea of community involvement; the idea of giving something back to the community. From my current vantage point, I see two important reasons for doing this. One is simply ethical. As social beings created to live in community, we need to be involved in the community beyond what our career dictates. The other, and this is the second point I wanted to make, is that it is good to be involved in the community to become known. Some readers might say that they don't really care to become known, but this brings us back to the ethical question. When your community has put a lot into your education, you do have a responsibility to give something back. This refers not necessarily just to during to the time of your working career but could even refer to the period of your retirement. If you have not been out there, and your community doesn't know about you, your expertise, your experience and what you have to offer, you probably can't expect them to come knocking on your door after your retirement. Again, some of you may be perfectly fine with that. You might want to contribute to your community in ways that have nothing do with the nature of your career. Others of you may still want to contribute with the knowledge and experience that you have acquired through your career, even though you have retired. It all depends on you and your goals for retirement; what keeps you occupied and happy, but remember: balance and the community.