A friend recently asked me why I want to retire financially. I’ve been thinking deeply about why I want to the last few weeks.
Of course, the reason most of us who want to get to this position is to have more of our time in our control to do the things we like. Some of us want to spend it with friends and family. So many of us just want to experience things that bring us joy without having to surrender our time to doing the things we don’t.
But I already spend a fair bit of time with my friends and family. More time with them isn’t going to be make me happier. Maybe a little bit more happy but I’m sure I’m going to be back looking for something to keep myself busy in a matter of a few days. I do have ideas I want to work on without monetary obligations when I retire, but that didn’t seem like the primary reason I want to retire sooner.
The primary reason, I’ve realized, is to have my time in my control when life gives me tough moments – moments where I don’t feel anything but the profound, personal loss of something or someone or a period in time that I am aware I can no longer have in my life.
To grieve; to feel what I’m feeling in totality without having to go through those feelings across time in fragments; to take in and process the breadth of pain and situations that life is sending my way. That is really the reason I want my time in my control, and that is the ultimate reason behind why I want to retire.
I want to grieve about the people I’m losing, the people I can’t have in my life, attributing reasons to why someone came into my life (how foolish because most things that happen can’t be reasoned), think about what I would do when my parents aren’t around. I want to look through everything I’m feeling very slowly, without being subject to the commitments of time that capitalism brings to life.
I really want to grieve in totality, man – without having to surrender to capitalism from 9 am to until my last work call that night :shrugs:
