HOW IT ALL STARTED: FROM “I MUST DO” TO “I WANT TO DO“…
Life flies by at lightning speed, a life in which we constantly ‘have to’ do something. And that ‘I have to’ starts already at a very young age. In my time, as a four-year-old, you went to kindergarten, where learning began. In a playful way, you learned how to learn and interact with your classmates. And of course, how to listen to what the teacher was saying. Hence, the great ‘obeying’ started at an early age.
After two years, I moved on to primary school, where I spent six years learning writing, reading, arithmetic, geography, history and other such subjects. With a total of two plus six equals eight years of kindergarten and primary school, and with a lot of ‘have to, obey and listen’, I moved on to secondary school. There it went on for an additional six years with new subjects and a countless number of tests and exams, to show that what I learned sticked. Or at least, that I was able to reproduce what I was fed as knowledge in school. So, I dutifully learned about the drosophila (or the fruit fly) and thus about ‘dominant genetics’, I memorized the German nouns, and I tried to remember all about world history. On top of that, I dissected frogs, I learned English and French, I understood that a kilo of feathers is as heavy as a kilo of potatoes, I could do mathematics as the best and I also knew what the first twenty chemical elements were in the periodic table (HHeLiBeBCNOFNeNaMgAlSiPSClArKCa). The fact that I can still reproduce the latter after more than forty-five years, clearly indicates how we were drilled in ‘you must learn’. Much of which I have never, ever used in my daily life. For example, I knew at a young age that Chemistry was not my thing, so knowing those twenty elements wasn’t very useful to me. Some of what I’d learned however came in handy, particularly the languages. And although I dropped French as a language in the third grade, the basis turned out to be solid when I later picked up this language again with the Alliance Française and DuoLingo. The German language has also always stayed with me, but it turned out that I had already mastered it without having had any formal education in it. The many years in my youth in which I watched German television and read Donald Duck comics in German had already prepared me for this, without realizing it. Mathematics also came in handy, although I could not have imagined that during my ‘secondary school’ years. These six years of secondary school also came to an end – again with many exams – with the total learning counter in my first eighteen years of existence already reaching fourteen ‘study years of must do and obey’. And if I thought that was the end of it, I was disappointed…
After secondary school, I continued studying. However, I had no idea what I wanted to study. Should I go to the Police Academy, the Military Academy, or study German? I reviewed a lot of possibilities, but none of them really appealed to me. In the end, I decided at the very last minute to study Electrical Engineering. As a youngster, inspired more by a good friend at the time than by a passion, I had come into contact with ‘electronic circuits. We built receivers and transmitters and eventually – after having operated an illegal radio-station for several years – I became a certified radio amateur. When I had to choose a study at the very last minute, I chose Electrical Engineering for lack of a better one. Another four years of studying, bringing the counter to eighteen school years. And because I wanted to continue my studies during my work (getting my master’s in business administration and psychology), I added an extra eight years part-time, parallel to my work. Conclusion: no less than twenty-six years of study with the continuous need to ‘must do & perform’! I was twenty-six years of age. And if I had thought that that was the end of the process, I would have missed the point completely. After all these years of study, you are expected to join the army of working-class heroes, or the gray working masses. Earn money and contribute to society. So that’s how it went for me.
After graduating from my Electronic Engineering study, I joined a large electronic company. This beautiful company now only has seventy thousand employees, when I joined in the early eighties there were still almost three hundred thousand! A staggering number of staff members who all worked very hard. When I took office, I was only twenty-two years old. However, I knew then that I could take early retirement (pre-retirement) at the age of fifty-six if I could keep it up. Only thirty-four years of hard work before enjoying life in all freedom. Now that I have passed the age of sixty, I know that the truth is more stubborn. Pre-retirement was gradually abolished and eventually the retirement age went from sixty, to sixty-two and finally to sixty-five. After I left the company, it even went up to sixty-eight years, no less than twelve years longer than I could have ever foreseen. The state pension age has now also passed sixty-seven years.
In other words, if I briefly summarize all the above: from the age of four to almost seventy, you are constantly busy with ‘having to’. Having to learn, having to study, having to work, having to earn money, having to contribute, having to support, having to perform… always must do…
For me, too, at this moment it is still the case that I ‘have to’ continue to work for a while. Due to a divorce and the high alimony that I must pay, I have to continue working at least until I am sixty-four. At that moment, the yoke of alimony is off my shoulder, and I can start ‘un-having’. And although I sometimes wonder if I shouldn’t even start finding a fun hobby or activity for after retirement, my after-retirement to-do list grows almost automatically. At the top of this list is the purchase of a nice camper, with which I can explore the various countries in- and perhaps outside my continent Europe. I have seen a lot of the wide world thanks to my work and private travels. Within Europe, although I have lived on this beautiful continent all my life, there are still many places that I want to discover (note: I say ‘want’ here, and emphatically not ‘must’). To start with, in my own little country, the Netherlands. Provinces such as Drenthe, Overijssel, Friesland and Groningen, I can blindly point them out on the map, but I don’t really know them. In fact, I’ve hardly been there. And outside my national borders, the list of places and countries to visit is even bigger. Tours through Scandinavia, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Greece… it’s an almost never-ending list. One that I will start to work on in four years, after the purchase of the camper and without ‘having to’.
Four years from now. Or more concretely, at the time of this writing, there are still three-and-a-half years separating me from my plans to travel. And to enjoy my retirement. Not a long period at all, knowing that I have now had almost forty years of employment as a company employee and self-employed person. Hence, it’s a piece of cake, just a little more perseverance, and freedom belongs to me! Isn’t it wonderful, those plans for the moment when I retire. However, without falling into doom and gloom, I now also know that postponing plans can mean that it never becomes reality. I should have learned my lesson by now. To start with what happened to me at the age of forty-two, already eighteen years ago. At the time, during a consultation at the hospital, I was told that I might not have long to live: diagnosis of bone cancer. The fact that I’m writing this now indicates that I’ve been very lucky. Where others can no longer tell the tale, I am still alive and kicking. But whether I really learned from this experience at that moment, I dare to doubt. Or no, I have no doubt, I have not learned or had learned much from it. Once I recovered, I went back into the rat race of performing and ‘having to’. And that goes on and on, to this day. So no, my own experience of ‘mortality’ has not led me to really rearrange my life. The stories of colleagues who have made all kinds of plans for their retirement and have just or not reached this phase before they exchanged the current for the eternal, also turned out to be an insufficient wake-up call for me. Unfortunately, this required two more experiences: the death of my brother-in-law just before his retirement and the fact that I recently heard that a camping acquaintance in the south of France would not reach her retirement age. Both, my brother-in-law and the camping-lady, also had all kinds of great plans for the moment when they could exchange work and ‘having to’ for retirement. It’s not that I’m afraid I’ll die just before – or immediately after – retirement. No, it’s not. Of course, that’s not going to happen to me, I’ve resolved to live to be at least ninety-six years old (or even a hundred-and-six) in good health. But in the end, no one, including me, can control that. So, I can keep procrastinating and then never have the opportunity to realize certain dreams… Or I can fill in my wishes earlier… In short, I have now realized – perhaps late – that I should not postpone things too much and too often. That ‘not having to do’ is also possible now, whilst continue working for several years to earn a living. If I am (or become?) sensible, I will already make time in between all the work to be able to slow down, to have traveling experiences and to develop the carpe diem feeling. Start now with doing certain things that are on my ‘after my retirement wish list’. And to, as a very appropriate name of a delicious French wine, do ‘pas si vite’ (not so fast) every now and then, not to rush from one responsibility to another and to start enjoying it now.
What could be better than starting with that motorhome dream. In my mind, such a camper offers me the ultimate feeling of freedom, enjoying and going wherever I want. I have not yet made a decision whether I am going to buy a motorhome now and not wait until my retirement. For that, there are still a few things that I need to consider for this. One of them is whether I just think it’s fun to go on the road with a camper or whether this is the case. Does owning and using a motorhome offer the relaxation and freedom I dream of and that am looking for? To put it simply, I can only determine this in one way: by experiencing it. And make decisions based on this experience. Step by step, or as the Japanese say so beautifully: ‘ipo-ipo’…
… with which I very bravely take a first step by stopping to postpone everything until later… and decide to hit the road with a rental camper this year, in 2024! Nice, I’m really going to see if the camper life suits me. Not later, not in three-and-a-half years, but now… carpe diem!