Loathing the word ‘retired’.

For the past five years, I have lived in Mexico and my official status is ‘retired’.

The word makes me cringe. Exactly what does it mean? Let’s examine it: “Retired.” Does that mean you were tired before and now are tired again? Or maybe you are an automobile tire and have been retreaded. Retired.

What the word means to many is ‘irrelevant.’ What you think is an old person’s folly. You live in the past. You have no role in the future, just as you will have no place in history, but for a scant few of us. The world will long remember Adolf Hitler, but not as many will remember Mahatma Gandhi. All the while, our world spins and rotates through the outer fringes of a universe we are far from understanding.

Perhaps you have an inheritance. So, for a brief time, you will be remembered. Your children, or other relatives who have little to no time to see you now, will certainly attend your ‘celebration of life’ yet in their hearts, they will look at it as a ‘celebration of death’ because there might be some money in it.

Do I sound cynical, skeptical, doubtful, distrustful, suspicious, disbelieving, unbelieving, scoffing, doubting, incredulous; pessimistic, negative, hard-bitten, hardened, hard, world-weary, disenchanted, jaundiced, sardonic or bleak?

No. I am just someone tired of the word ‘retired’ with access to a thesaurus.