Transcript: “I Am Not Done”
Written and presented by Kristina DiPalo
June 7, 2023
There are two foundational things about my father: He loved his family and he loved his job. My mother would joke that he loved his job too much - he loved that company far more than they would ever love him back.
In the winter of 1987, a few months after turning 64, that company told him it was time to retire. This was a common practice. You hit a particular target age, your company reshuffles the deck and sometimes within a matter of days you are out the door.
My father understood adulthood through work. He left a factory town in Southern Maine at 19 to join the Navy in the Second World War. He worked at a radio plant to support him and my mom when they were first married and he eventually started selling construction and mining equipment, rising to a solid position in middle management. Work equaled purpose. Purpose equaled life.
On his last day of work, he got home early and he waited for my mother to arrive from her job.
She told me that she found him standing in the garage, crying, telling her that he was afraid that his life now might be over. He got a part-time job to recapture some of what he lost but he could not shake the feeling that he was no longer productive, no longer valued, and no longer relevant.
In October 1988, weeks after turning 66, my father was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer.
Ten weeks later he was dead.
I believe my father died thinking that his productive years were behind him. Imagine thinking that you are no longer productive, no longer valued, and no longer relevant. Imagine believing you are obsolete at 64.
I mean we're about to enter a Presidential election cycle where one of the candidates is 80 and the other leading contender is just shy of 77. And yet I, at my age, am starting to grapple with what it means to become obsolete. I see my children moving into young adulthood. I'm worried that I'm aging out of lucrative corporate consulting assignments. I am becoming a “woman of a certain age.” So yes, I'm wondering am I getting too close to my own sell by date.
This version of obsolescence is a very slow creep. It's realizing that you're one of the older people at a business meeting. That you have no idea who is hot right now on Tik Tok nor do you really care. And it's wondering if you've been operating a certain way in the world for so long that who you are now is somehow hidden from view.
This is a precarious transition.
The transition from childhood to young adulthood is guided. The transition from young adulthood to peak adulthood is praised. The transition from peak adulthood to AARP card?
It is unnerving.
Paid retirement as a concept is surprisingly young. In the late 19th century Germany was facing rampant youth unemployment so their Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, decided to pay men over 70 an income to stop working. During the Great Depression, U.S President Franklin Roosevelt ushered in Social Security, guaranteeing a fully paid retirement starting at 65. A path was being carved to support people financially as they got to their later years if they stopped working.
There are people who look forward to retirement as it approaches and there are people, like me, who have no desire to downshift anytime soon. You know, if there's one thing that I have come to learn about myself as I grapple with feeling obsolete it is this:
I am not done.
Who's going to decide when I'm done? I will. And I'm here.
Now I do not want to go back to an earlier time in my life. I'm not that person anymore but how do I carve a path forward between these twin pillars of retirement or hanging on to the past?
I believe it begins with recognizing a few hard truths.
The first hard truth is surrender. Surrendering myself entirely to who I am and where I am now across every aspect of my life. To acknowledging that the runway before me is no longer endless and so what I do matters poignantly. And welcoming in the fear, the nervousness, those butterflies that accompany starting something completely new.
The next hard truth is clarity. Clarity around the real spark, the joy that makes me want to get out of bed in the morning and engage with the world. And clarity too in putting aside those old markers of success: the titles, the recognition, the organizational influence, that feeling that you are somebody.
And the last hard truth, which actually is a blessing, is shifting to self-leadership. You see, when we talk about being relevant or obsolete, we're being other oriented. You are relevant to something or someone outside of yourself. When you stop chasing relevancy and you embrace “I am not done-ness” it's the opposite of being other oriented. It's about finding relevancy within yourself and then translating that knowledge to the work, the opportunities, the spaces, the life you want to live.
This is not a precarious transition, no. This one is steady.
It's impossible to speculate what my father's life would have been if he thought he could find another path forward. If he believed he could say “I am not done.” And if retirement was from a job, not a way of life.
As his daughter, I understand now the power and the pride in saying “I am not done.” And neither are you.
