Back when the idea of retirement was just a distant glimmer, I often considered what it would mean. Like most, I usually thought about free time and how I would use it. Surprisingly, though, six years “post-career,” I’ve come to believe that retirement’s biggest surprise is also its most disconcerting: It’s the privilege, and maybe the responsibility, of finally being myself.
I always knew I wasn’t especially suited for the structure of an organization. But I also saw myself as adaptable, a team player, a valuable contributor. It would be easy to rationalize now why my career played out as it did, why I didn’t rise higher, why my ideas didn’t last longer, why I wasn’t more respected. That would be the easy way but it wouldn’t be (in the words of Ranger Doug), “…the cowboy way.” Objectivity is difficult, but without it there is no understanding. I see only now how ill-suited I was to to the life I was living: I wasn’t a good field biologist, my ideas were not that good, and I didn’t belong in an organization. In fact, as much as I considered myself a team player, I was constantly struggling against the yoke of supervision and organizational hierarchy.
In retrospect, I used a system I wasn’t suited for to gain the benefits of that system: a secure job and salary, health benefits, an annuity, respect. But I paid a price in forfeiting my identity. I am at heart a poet and philosopher, a carpenter, a musician, a gardner. But all of that took a back seat to my 30-year acting job.
There is no “lesson” here, just an observation. I did what the vast majority do, sold out to a system in exchange for security and identity. That I did so is no surprise. But understanding has only come with the freedom to consider objectively, now that the price has already been paid. And understanding comes with a price. Because now that I am free to recognize and accept who and what I am, what will I do with it?
This and the preceding post are your best so far. They are distinguished by plain insightful writing with no attempt at more general speculation; they carry conviction and honesty about life. 150 or 200 pages of this material would constitute literature. Oh, and once you have found your own authentic freedom, you will have to commit yourself to an enterprise or a person to feel it and to know it completely. Paradoxically, in keeping all of your options open, by not choosing some specific course of action and thereby negating alternatives you wish to retain as “live” options, you lose the value and meaning of freedom. Freedom in itself cannot tell you what to do with it. Ultimately, what we must grasp and hold close is the realization that we are radically finite creatures in space and time, but that we harbor a radical freedom to pursue our values within limits that are both severe and bountiful.
I want to know is more about the concept of a “project” in regards to personal freedom. For openers, does Sartre present this directly somewhere? Or is this how you’ve interpreted his message? If from Sartre directly, I’d appreciate something of his I could read on it (I’ve already ordered Nausea).
As I understand it, you are saying that choosing an initiative is a means of “materializing,” so to speak, personal freedom. It’s not real (or, at least, it’s useless and moot) unless you exercise it in a directed way…in other words, by accepting and embracing the corollary to personal freedom, personal responsibility. Otherwise it’s academic and has no real value…and you’ve paid no price for it, i.e., foregoing other choices in favor of your chosen pursuit. Given unlimited time and resources, sure, we could pursue our every whim…but we only have what’s left of our lives. In a simplistic way, it’s like having the right to vote and then not exercising it. Researching and choosing a candidate and then going to the polls is too much work. So effectively, the right to vote is moot (that is, your own concrete right, not the conceptual one available to us all).
Am I even close here? If I am, then my next question is, “What constitutes a “project?” Does it matter if one is selfish in choosing? Or must it be for a common good? (I suspect I know your answer, but am asking anyway, for clarity.) Does committing oneself to a spouse and/or a family count? What about a career? How about deciding to pursue an advanced degree? Or committing to learning an instrument? (Yes, I know, I’m speaking personally here…). Would it count if you pursued and then achieved a competence in history and political science, but then did nothing to disseminate the lessons you’ve learned for the greater good? Or were a gifted inventor, but kept your inventions to yourself? And having chosen a “project,” when can you rest? When have you achieved it?
These are the questions I’d have presented in a call, but I’d rather capture them (and your replies) here.
As in my response to your comment on the previous post, thanks again for the insight and counsel. It is blunt, but timely, and this is no place for subtleties. I take this seriously and will do my best to act on it.
As to my writing, thanks also, though I confess to a bit of surprise. I have various reminiscenses from over the years, written spontaneously because some memory sprang up and I needed to process it. I’ve wondered at times whether others could relate, or if the effect of those memories are unique to me. But there is so much exhibitionist confessional narrative out there already that I couldn’t see adding mine to the pile. Instead, I’ve usually channeled the emotion into the more conventional medium of poetry…much harder to write, but brings its own satisfaction. Though, that said, the implicit narrative is not as accessible. As to producing “150 or 200 pages of it,” I’d be afraid that, in forcing such narrative, it would become an affectation. Or maybe I’m just making excuses so I don’t have to tackle a book…
Your request for specific answers to specific questions is itself an attempt to unburden yourself of your personal freedom, a freedom which is vast within determined limits, and weighs heavily on those who embrace it. Sartre does not give answers to such questions precisely because his conception of freedom will not allow it. You are in fact very close to his conception in a general way. Here is an excerpt from his paper “Existentialism is a Humanism:”
Quietism is the attitude of people who say, “let others do what I cannot do.” The doctrine I am presenting before you is precisely the opposite of this, since it declares that there is no reality except in action. It goes further, indeed, and adds, “Man is nothing else but what he purposes, he exists only in so far as he realises himself, he is therefore nothing else but the sum of his actions, nothing else but what his life is.” Hence we can well understand why some people are horrified by our teaching. For many have but one resource to sustain them in their misery, and that is to think, “Circumstances have been against me, I was worthy to be something much better than I have been. I admit I have never had a great love or a great friendship; but that is because I never met a man or a woman who were worthy of it; if I have not written any very good books, it is because I had not the leisure to do so; or, if I have had no children to whom I could devote myself it is because I did not find the man I could have lived with. So there remains within me a wide range of abilities, inclinations and potentialities, unused but perfectly viable, which endow me with a worthiness that could never be inferred from the mere history of my actions.” But in reality and for the existentialist, there is no love apart from the deeds of love; no potentiality of love other than that which is manifested in loving; there is no genius other than that which is expressed in works of art. The genius of Proust is the totality of the works of Proust; the genius of Racine is the series of his tragedies, outside of which there is nothing. Why should we attribute to Racine the capacity to write yet another tragedy when that is precisely what he did not write? In life, a man commits himself, draws his own portrait and there is nothing but that portrait. No doubt this thought may seem comfortless to one who has not made a success of his life. On the other hand, it puts everyone in a position to understand that reality alone is reliable; that dreams, expectations and hopes serve to define a man only as deceptive dreams, abortive hopes, expectations unfulfilled; that is to say, they define him negatively, not positively. Nevertheless, when one says, “You are nothing else but what you live,” it does not imply that an artist is to be judged solely by his works of art, for a thousand other things contribute no less to his definition as a man. What we mean to say is that a man is no other than a series of undertakings, that he is the sum, the organisation, the set of relations that constitute these undertakings.
I feel like I’m in therapy. I don’t know what you’re charging, but I don’t like the price…
But being serious, thanks much for this. I think I get it, but I realize now I didn’t always. This concept was more of an adage: “Ideas are cheap.” “Actions speak louder than words.” “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” But this makes such adages seem flippant. And the true burden of freedom emerges.
I began this journal for a place to capture ideas and stimulate discussion. Short-sighted, I guess, I didn’t expect this kind of insight. But I am coming to see this as it’s true value.
I’m driving south today. You’ve given me much to think about.
I know it is harsh, Bob. Many students of existentialist thought find themselves reeling from the discovery that what they took to be a commitment made in the utmost seriousness was only anemic at best, that they never took their lives seriously in the radical sense that Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre and others demand; Your catalog of potential projects is quite good; what you must realize from within your own very personal stance is that the freedom to put such questions is equaled by the freedom to give decisive responses to them. Any one of them works as a project if entered into with the appropriate resolve. There is right resolution even without any right response.Your questions betray an attempt to nail down the “right” project, but, of course, there is no such thing or if there were, that singular thing would constitute a barrier to your freedom. And that is precisely what people want in order not to writhe under the crushing burden of freedom.