Why I shall NEVER retire! A Declaration of Independence

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant

I am at the age (64 on 02/16/11) when I am asked one 
particular question over and over again: "When do you plan 
to retire?" My resolute answer delivered con brio surprises 
my questioners: "I shall NEVER retire!"

Because they ALWAYS want to know why… I have 
decided to write this, a latter-day Declaration of 
Independence, to provide a ready means of response 
for myself and all the other people worldwide who 
are thrilled by what they do and the life  they have 
fashioned and have absolutely no desire to change 
things, no matter what.

J’y suis, J’y reste.

It was le Marechal McMahon at the siege of Sebastopol 
in 1855 who memorably barked out this trenchant phrase 
which loosely translates into "I am here and here I shall 
remain!"  It’s the way those of us feel who are adamant 
about either retaining our present position or engaging 
in other constructive work instead of retiring.

You see, we know a secret that the vast horde of the 
retired either does not know or came to understand too 
late: work invigorates, energizes, and exercises facilities 
which otherwise quickly enervate and deteriorate. In other 
words, productive, meaningful work is essential to staying 
young, alive, and alert. So, let’s review all the reasons why 
retirement as generally practised and understood is  one 
of the worst things you can ever do to yourself.

1) Retirement rots the brain.

If you have work you like,  one reason  you fancy it 
is because you have meaningful questions to answer, 
challenges to face, and labor to do. Work, as Sigmund 
Freud well understood, is crucial to the well-lived life. 
Take  away work which engages your full attention, 
experience, and expertise, and you have removed a 
critical factor of your well-being.  Formless leisure can 
never replace the knowledge that you are engaged in 
something worth doing.

2) Retirement leads to physical deterioration.

Take a good,close look at the next person aged 65 
or older who passes your way. The ones engaged in 
significant,  constructive labor (the only kind of work 
any of us should ever do) have an aura radiating energy 
and purpose. They are "with it". Lights! Camera! Action!

The presentation of our laborless peers is very, very 
different. Having nothing better to do than contemplate 
physical infirmities and eternity, they are often peevish, 
selfish, with vistas narrowing, hope evaporating. In such 
circumstances, it is easy to see why physical problems 
and limitations abound.

3) Retirement slashes  your income and lifestyle.

As every study grimly shows, the average person 
hasn’t put away nearly enough money to sustain at 
retirement their current lifestyle, much less do the extra 
things (world cruise, anyone?) you desire.  Do you want to 
make do with less? I certainly don’t. Why face the 
conclusion of life scrimping, having to count every 
penny and cut back… and back… and back? It’s demeaning 
and demoralizing. What’s more it’s completely unnecessary… 
if you keep satisfying labor in your life.

4) Retirement renders a lifetime of experience and 
expertise superfluous , useless.

The day you leave your present employ, you are at 
the top of your professional game. You know the 
most, can do the most, can create the most, and 
solve the most. You are a person of knowledge, 
wisdom, and insight. Wow!

Walk out that door… cut the ties with what you 
have done before and your skill level and all you 
can do with it starts to deteriorate at once… each 
day diminishing  your knowledge and skills. You are 
now walking away from everything you have 
aimed at and achieved for so many years. Does this 
make any sense at all?

5) Retirement reduces respect, deference, and 
awe.

Are you good at what you do? Have you worked a 
lifetime to perfect your skills,  to be and do better 
than others in your field? Are you a master of 
your craft, with the respect, deference and even 
awe that that generates? Will you like doing with 
less and less of this, as the relevancy of what 
you know and can do inevitably diminishes; as 
you move farther and farther away from the peak 
of your skills?

When was the last time you watched a retired 
person at any event in your field? They were no 
doubt greeted politely, even enthusiastically. But 
the conversation quickly moved on to today’s 
questions, today’s challenges… and as it did so 
the retired person, no matter how supreme he 
had been before,  became inevitably de trop. 
Remember when this happened to former 
star Norma Desmond when she returned to 
Paramount Studios in "Sunset Boulevard"? It was, 
in the truest sense of the word… pathetic. Is this what 
you really want, to be forgotten… but not gone?

6) Retirement reduces your ability to help others.

The best careers are always about the good you 
do to others. Retire and that important ability declines day 
by day, painfully, inevitably.

Have people benefited from what you know and 
can do? Has the need for this knowledge and skill 
abated in any way? Or is it as robust as ever? If 
the latter, then why (except for purely selfish reasons) 
would you ever want to stop helping? Stop improving? 
Stop transforming and enlightening? It makes utterly 
no sense…  no sense at all.

How a wily German prince , long dead, is 
influencing your life.

Prince Otto von Bismarck was probably the most 
important statesman of the 19th century, conniving 
as he did at the  unification of Germany.  But perhaps 
his even more important (and invidious) legacy is the 
fact that he determined the age of retirement for much 
of the world. This determination is having a very 
definite and pronounced influence on… you!

Prince Bismarck, first Chancellor of the Imperial Reich, 
wanted to dish the fast-growing German Socialists, alarming 
people with a very different national vision than his own. 
Old-age pensions provided him with the means of seeming 
benevolent to folks whose votes he wanted, without costing much.

German statisticians (then as now superb at their craft) made 
it clear to him that most people would never live to 65 and that that, 
therefore, was a most admirable date to pledge pensions.  And so 
a sacred cow was born, with Prince Bismarck’s raucous 
laugh reverberating through the years, keeping millions enthralled 
to one of the most cynical of men and his very cynical policy: promise 
what you will never have to give.

Today, you are young at  65… act like it!

Today’s 65 year olds are completely different from those 
of over a century ago. For one thing, we are alive. For another, 
we are healthier, more fit, more active…. and thus in no particular 
practical need of retirement or the trickle that is Social Security.

It’s time, therefore, to take a new view of retirement; to see 
it for what it is, not the solution to but the enemy of our well 
being. Join me: say no to retirement. It’ll be the very best 
decision you have ever made and will put you in the company 
of sovereigns and pontiffs, none of whom ever retire either!

Abraham Lincoln… captivated by words, created by words, empowered by words, glorified by words. Reflections on his Cooper Union Speech, February27, 1860.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant Author’s program note. 150 years ago, March 4, 1861 Abraham Lincoln (born 1809), became 16th president of the United States. And if you do not believe in destiny, fate, or kismet, even you will wonder at the undoubted fact that at the time of its maximum peril, the Great Republic should have found the perfect man to guide her affairs and so preside not over her premature dissolution (as so many thought and even wished) but her greatest trial, from which, terrible forge though it was, emerged the greatest of nations. Oh, yes, here was the hand of God, indeed… to the wonder of all… and as we know His ways are mysterious so we shouldn’t wonder at this man and his story… a story to be told in the words he loved, the words he mastered, the words he used to effect his great purpose… the words we all have at our disposal… but which only he used with such grace and power… and such resolve… the mark of the consummate master of our language and the great uses to which it can always rise… For this tale, I have selected as the occasional music a tune Abraham Lincoln loved and tapped his toe to, “Jimmy Crack Corn”. It’s a frolicksome number thought to be a black face minstrel song of the 1840s. Like so much that touches Lincoln, it’s not quite what it appears to be…. that is, a black slave’s lament over his master’s death… it has indeed a subtext of rejoicing over that death and possibly having caused it by deliberate negligence…. “Dat Blue Tail Fly”… It is a feeling every slave must have thought at some time… which every master must have understood and feared… and from this seemingly unsolvable conundrum Lincoln freed both, saving the people, cleansing the Great Republic. Without benefit of formal education… yet with every necessary word to hand. Consider the matter of Illinois, the 21st state, frontier of the Great Republic in 1818 when it was admitted to the Union. It was a land firmly focused on the bright future all were certain was coming… the better to obliterate and make bearable the rigors and unceasing travails of the present. The land was rich… the richness of the people would soon follow. In this land of future promise, inchoate, Lincoln, like all those who delight in words, found his labors lightened and vista magnified by books, and thanks to the good and helpful work of Robert Bray (2007), we may learn just what books he possessed, and so which words he knew, by whom rendered, and how. It is impossible to know in just what order young Lincoln found the books, read the books, and with what degree of joy and enthusiasm, for Lincoln (unlike many who love and live by words) was not a great writer of marginal commentary, in which reader engages in often enraged tete-a-tete with author. Such marginalia are cream to any biographer, but in Lincoln’s case were infrequent. In any event, we can surmise that he learned his words first from the great King James version of The Bible, perhaps the most influential and certainly most lyric book in the language. If so, it bestowed on him not only the words but their sonority, cadence and above all, moral certainty, all of which were critical in the development of his mature style and so helped save a great nation from self-destruction. There followed first the odd volume, happily received, then a steady trickle, then the glorious days when he could have as many books, and so as many words, as he wanted; paradise to a man for whom each word, and every book, was a key to greater understanding of the cosmos… and himself… Thus, E.A. Andrews and S. Stoddard “A Grammar of the Latin Language” (1836); Nathan Bailey “Dictionary of English Etymology” (1721); James Barclay “Dictionary” (1774); George Bancroft “History of the United States (1834); Francis Bacon “Essays” (1625); John Bunyan “The Pilgrim’s Progress” (1678); Benjamin Franklin “Autobiography” (1818); Edward Gibbon “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” (1776)… … and one great poet after another, for as Lincoln learned, as every word smith must learn, there can be no mastery of words where there is no understanding of poets and their precise, meticulous craft… and so one finds without surprise the works of Robert Burns, Lord Byron, Thomas Gray whose “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” (1751) he so loved… with its sad beauty, lines which, once read, seem to have been written for Lincoln himself: “The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave, Awaits alike the inevitable hour, the paths of glory lead but to the grave.” It was a thought Lincoln knew only too well, and he had but to touch this poem to think on its powerful, unanswerable, haunting words, including these… “Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne”… but not yet… not yet. And so Lincoln on every day sought out the light enabling him to learn the words, all the words he needed and his work demanded…. thus was he up with day’s first light… to finish his work betimes, to snatch some minutes for the words…, then to pass the night and gain some further words by fire light and smokey tallow. Because the words would not be denied… Lincoln was not to be denied. They beckoned. He followed… until he was at last ready to begin, just to begin, his great work… the work that needed all of him… and so every word at his command. Thus was he summoned from Springfield in Illinois to the greatest city of the Great Republic, New York, where its most renowned and anxious citizens, worthy, substantial, concerned, waited with impatience, condescension, worry and, yes, even hope to hear what a prairie lawyer named Lincoln had to say to them about the great issue of their day and how this great blot upon the Great Republic could be resolved… and their great experiment in governance be purified. And so did Abraham Lincoln rise to speak, at Cooper Union, February 27, 1860. The most important speech since Washington’s Farewell Address (1796). These days only specialists are knowledgeable about the Cooper Union speech… but this is wrong, for it gave the Union a new voice, a new leader, and a man fiercely dedicated to the preservation and triumph of the Constitution. Without Cooper Union Lincoln would never have been nominated in 1860, so never would have served, and could not have brought his signal talents to bear on saving the Great Republic. And thus the greatest experiment in human history and affairs might well have come to naught, to the impoverishment and despair of our species. But Cooper Union did happen… and with every word the nation knew it had found not merely a good and honest man, but a savior… a man fiercely dedicated to truth… fiercely dedicated to working together with even obdurate men who hated and outraged each other… fiercely determined to find the formula to protect and defend the Union… And so he was fierce in his moderation… fierce in his implacable opposition to anyone threatening the great federal Union… fierce in asking all good citizens to step forward and work for the greater good… And such was the power of his fierce message of what must be done, such was the excellence, clarity and reasonableness of his words, that this audience of the great thrilled and cheered him to the very echo. This single man whose ambition was defined (according to his law partner William H. Herndon) as “a little engine that knew no rest”, was now in place for the uttermost struggle, a struggle for common sense, common purpose, common decency and the validation and acknowledgement of all. He was ready… for he had the ideas, the fortitude, the moral certainty… and, above all, the words he needed, the words that saved the Great Republic and remind us still of what is possible when we have a leader who summons the “better angels of our nature.”

Of earmuffs, sissies, bone-chilling cold, and warm ears; thanks to young inventor Chester Greenwood.

Author’s program note. Winter. What a revoltin’ development this is. I often wonder on days so ridiculously cold like this one is why the Puritans stayed here after arriving and sampling the depths of a Massachusetts winter. I suppose it had something to do with their land grants and, of course, their pertinacious natures and obstinacy. For they were of the variety of folks who say they’ll do a thing and then — do it, never mind that their friends and fellow Pilgrims are dropping like flies all around them.
I often think of such folks on days like this, in winters like this. Excuse me if I get too intimate too fast, but I wonder, yes and for long periods of time, too, for I like to be thorough in my cogitations and day dreams, I wonder… about the socks those Puritans wore, what undergarments and undies they fashioned, how they made vests and sweaters… scarves and hats, each and every item needed… and especially the focus of today’s ruminations, how they kept their godly ears from freezing and falling off, tangible victory tokens for Winter itself, who likes you to remember who is boss around these parts once the December solstice occurs.
Theocracies, autocracies, aristocracies, ideas on this and that, may all come and go but one fact of human history remains constant and insistent: if you live in a frigid climate, your ears will get plenty cold… and must be taken care of right away, whatever your other priorities for the day.
Meet the patron saint of warm ears…. Chester Greenwood.
For just such days, Chester Greenwood and his first epochal invention were born. And today we sing his praises…. while capering amidst snow and ice. Because of Master Greenwood we are safe and warm, ready for anything.
Because Chester Greenwood, whom I guarantee you never heard of until just this moment, is the man who invented earmuffs… and he hailed not so very far from where I’m writing you today, in Farmington in the State of Maine, where laconic residents know the answer to this ancient question, “Cold enough for you?” And then laugh their thin, silent laugh, the one that keeps their human heat within, not cast profligate like into the too brusque air. Mainers are like that, and we like them just that way, especially young Chester and his ear-saving invention.
Just 15.
Like everybody else in Farmington, Chester’s young ears got cold and turned all the colors of distress, first chalky white, then beet red, and finally the deep blue that signifies danger for the continued use, indeed existence of the ears he rightly prized and cherished. And being a practical lad, and caring, too, for the ears of his family and friends, he did what all folks of inventive disposition do… he began to dream up a solution, and fast, for his ears were big and therefore even colder than most.
As every true inventor knows, the solution to a pending problem — that “eureka!” moment — can occur anytime, anywhere. And you must always be ready when it happens. For that industrious young Greenwood boy it occurred one day when he was out having fun — or trying to –at Abbot Pond where he was breaking in a new pair of skates.
This was a very big deal for him, because he came from a poor family (as most Mainers did) with six kids… and new skates were like gold, for all that they had to be shared. Greenwood was anxious to try out those babies… but the wind whipping off the pond was just too much, even for this hardy lad. He raced home to his “Gram”, found in her proper place in the farmhouse kitchen and asked her to see what she could come up with to cover his ears. It was the kind of practical question every real Grammie expects, is glad to get, and can always do something about.
Chester didn’t just stand and watch as his Grammie worked; that was not his way, and so they worked together. Chester supplied the idea and the materials; Gram, proud of her inventive grandson, supplied the artistry and experience of her nimble fingers, and so they got on like a house afire.
Chester wanted beaver fur on the outside, black velvet on the inside to shield his ears. Wool would never do; too itchy.
Once the materials had been selected and approved, it was time to fashion the device that kept them secure and in place. To solve this problem, they chose a soft wire known as farm wire, a precursor of bailing wire. Some later accounts say the resulting device was then attached to a cap.
So readied for the elements, Chester returned to the pond where, with the warmest ears in the county, he astonished his shivering buddies with the joyous dexterity of unremitting youth.
Soon, this 15 year old whiz kid was in the business of crafting earmuffs for old and young alike; for Mainers know a good deal when they see it. And as Chester worked… he, like every inventor before him, made adjustments, improvements, corrections, never satisfied, always in pursuit of the perfect muff, which he called Greenwood’s ear protectors and which, like Henry Ford’s auto, you could have in any color so long as it was black.
In due course, in 1873, and just 18 mind, he was awarded U.S. patent number 188,292 thereby launching a business which kept 20 or so of his neighbors in Farmington gainfully employed for nearly 60 years. At its height in 1936, he produced some 400,000 muffs a year, doing well while doing good… which is or at least should be the objective of every inventor and entrepreneur.
Greenwood, by now a celebrity in the State of Maine and beyond, died in 1937, aged 79. He had lead the most beneficial of lives, finding needs and filling them, the time honored path to usefulness and wealth. Amongst his 130 patents are such devices as improvements on the spark plug; a decoy mouse trap called the Mechanical Cat; his own shock absorber, a hook for pulling doughnuts from boiling oil, the Rubberless Rubber Band, and the Greenwood Tempered Steel Rake.
But of all his many worthy and practical ideas, I still prefer his first achievement, those earmuffs in beaver and black velvet, for you see like Chester, and such great celebrities as Clark Gable, I have big ears, too; so big that in the Alphabet Poll in my high school year book, my ears were photographed after my discerning classmates had voted mine the most notable, and so they were. Delicious.
And thus, with ears like Greenwood’s, I had Greenwood’s problem; that is until I discovered Greenwood’s solution in a pair of Greenwood’s muffs, in black, of course. They were a statement, that I was a practical boy myself, always desirous of keeping these pristine ears in fine working order. Besides, I don’t mind tellling you, I looked killing in mine, arresting, handsome, cute to boot. Not like Christopher Ninnis, that wag, who made derisory comments about sissies in earmuffs, keeping his in a box. But then… look how he turned out.
Note: In 1977, Maine declared December 21st “Chester Greenwood Day” to honor the king of warm ears whilst the City of Farmington, Maine kept employed by Greenwood’s genius, throws him an annual birthday bash, complete with parade where police cruisers are decorated as giant earmuffs. It’s the first Saturday in December. He deserves it, all of it, don’t you think?
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