THE ART OF STRETCHING TIME

 

How to best use your time in retirement is a much talked about and discussed topic. The concept of time changes over the years. When you worked your time wasn’t yours. To be successful you spent it accomplishing tasks and goals. When you were able to vacation, it always seemed to short. You strived to “stretch time,” enjoying the brief calmness and time to reflect. The feeling lingered, but soon disappeared when you returned to work.

If your fortunate enough to retire, all the time that lays ahead is yours. You now are truly free. With that though, can also come occasional aimlessness. You don’t have to fill it by running from A to B like in work days. If you don’t find the right perspective on this, the result can leave you feeling depressed and lost. This is doubly true because you recognize that time does not go on forever. Your only given so much. Indeed, even the chance to have retirement time is being threatened by economic constraints.

Experts on retirement advise a standard recipe for dealing with all the free time you have. Find volunteer work, stay socially involved, exercise, dig deeper into hobbies, family and other things you have passion for. All good advice. 

Retirement time comes with no rules, it’s simply a gift and blessing. It should be valued even more than it is. Even during work years, you started to realize how important time out was. You made good use of stretching time. There will be inevitable times in retirement when you find yourself becalmed. Realizing they offer the same opportunity to reflect and reset that your work years vacations did. Time is the same if you are working or retired, it’s how you view and use it that counts.