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If
you're like most people, and particularly if you're a baby-boomer, you probably
feel you already put much time and effort into retirement planning, but have
you planned your life or only your income? Have you considered the emotional
and spiritual, rather than just the financial, aspects of retirement?
There is an entire category of media--books, magazines,
advertisements by the hundreds--devoted to promoting one financial planning
service or another. Their illustrations feature the ubiquitous AARP couple:
a handsome, silver-haired man, lean, trim, tanned, and fit, paired with an
equally youthful looking silver-haired woman. These beautiful people with
movie star teeth are always smiling as they ski or swim or fish or golf or
gaze from the deck of a luxury liner. And the message is always the same:
our financial planners or investment counsellors or mutual fund managers
or securities brokers can help you find that feeling of well-being, contentment,
and security that will allow you to have the fullest possible retirement.
Well-being. Contentment. Security.
Add to these scenarios the same beautiful couple
dancing romantically across a page featuring a promotion for Viagra, and
the inevitable conclusion is that the retiring baby-boomers will want for
absolutely nothing.
Except what perhaps?
The answer begs a definition of well-being, contentment,
and security. Does it include emotional fulfillment, joy, and bliss? Does
it include a deep sense of connection with the people you most care about
and who most care about you? And what about a continuing or a renewed quest
for a greater understanding of the ageless mysteries, of the great unknown,
of a higher power, of God?
The media induce you to look forward to the good
life. Nothing wrong with that. But this book asks you to go beyond the good
life and consider also the life of goodness.
When you plan the financial aspects of retirement,
you don't just put the money away and forget about it. You pay attention
to what's happening with it; you actively manage it, working that into your
daily or weekly schedule. You must do the same thing with your spiritual
retirement planning. You can't just say, "When I retire I'll take time for
the things that enrich my inner life." You have to take time now, and begin
to practice those things now. Just as there should be a seamless transition
in your financial life, there should be an equally seamless transition in
your spiritual life.
© 2002 by James A. Autry All rights
reserved. |
