terra incognita

While shopping tonight for a few essentials for tomorrow - stabilized frosting, cream cheese, hot sauce & blue cheese crumbles - John & I lingered for a few moments to linger over the supemarket's magazine section.

Hit me between the eyes to find no less than three (3) magazines dedicated to where to live after retirement!! 

Less than 150 years ago, folks wouldn't have been surprised - they would have been dumbfounded.  The thought of moving across the country from their family & long-time friends would have been unthinkable.  

It's easy to forget how much "retirement" has changed over the last 100 years.  Our great-grandparents didn't think about a universal age of retirement.  Old age was one reason it was important to get married & have children (preferably boys to work the farm or learn the father's craft) - you had someone to take care of you when you were too old to ply your trade.  But even then, elders chipped in around the house, helping with meals & children or with chores.  

Getting the most out of your "golden years," of MOVING to the most interesting area and/or some place where you could make the most of your retirement income - that is a modern construct that flies in the face of all that came before.

Modern travel has made it possible for folks to relocate after retirement, hundreds or thousands of miles away from their children.  It's not glamorized in the same way it was back in the 1960s, when retirement communities first debuted.  Every year, countless retired couples make the switch from their longtime home to a new life in a new part of the country.  

Some of my friends who've taken the big step didn't have that much of a wrench, because the husband had been transferred several times throughout their marriage, so they didn't have close ties to a particular home or community.  And others have picked a place some of their good friends already live.  But for friends who have lived near their family & friends, in a beloved town, the wrench is unimaginable.

Sorry, but human beings just weren't cut out for that sort of existence.  We were born to be tribal, to live in families & clans & communities.  What has been happening for the past 75 years - in some ways, over the past 175 years! - is against our most basic natural order.

Instead of allowing things to get even worse, we all need to start looking at ways to reintroduce the continuum that has been lost.  Has been lost & isn't even missed by most people.  That's the biggest shock.  

We are in totally unknown territory & don't even realize it.