Retirement and Death
Two years ago, I sold my Nebraska home and moved to Oklahoma where my wife bought a house. The house is a nice home: four bedrooms and two living rooms. My wife turned the largest bedroom into my library, bought thirteen bookcases and a beautiful humidor for my cigars, and placed a large desk in front of a window so I could view a small acreage.
Yes, a nice library, a wonderful woman, and a great family…what more could a fella ask for?
Yet, I shortly became miserable and started dying.
Each day I went to my library and wondered what challenge I would face, but there were none—zilch. I missed the fast paced pressure of my old job. The only pace I experienced now was a feeling that I was going nowhere fast.
Is it true retirement leads to an early death?
My wonderful wife who I simply adore to the nth degree made my library look spectacular! I probably have eight hundred to a thousand books in my library…and scattered about the house. Yet, where was that previous longing to read them? Why did these same books now appear as furniture store props? What was wrong with me?
My blood pressure was up like a rocket on steroids. My doctor wanted me on medication...and fast. I told him I would think about the meds and let him know. He told me that I was walking straight into the grave. He didn’t know I was already in a grave—my library—with hundreds and hundreds of small, book-like grave markers, some straight and others leaning.
“I want you to drink eight glasses of water a day,” the doctor demanded at my last visit.
“What studies make you think drinking eight glasses of water is beneficial?” I asked. He looked at me as if he had just experienced a contemporary Inquisition, but I didn’t stop there.
“You do know that such studies have problematic meta-data,” I continued.
At that point, it seemed that he was going to thunder, “You don’t question god, boy. I’m a dock-tor!”
By then, I suppose we both understood we weren’t made for each other. I left his office like a single man leaving a nightmarish lunch date.
I went home, resolved to figure out why ye'ole internal thermostat was failing to control the’ole pesky blood pressure. Truth is, I didn’t know where that resolve would lead…if anywhere. I’d have better luck determining when invisible ink runs out than discovering the reason for my high blood pressure.
So, each morning I did what I always do… I shuffled to my library like Frankenstein on sedatives.
One such morning, while sitting at my desk, a book caught my eye—a pale yellow book. I paced myself as I approached the bookcase, wanting to remember the book's title before I actually viewed it.
How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, by Dale Carnegie.
Yes! My old memory was still there. It was beating like a heartbeat...Frankenstein was alive!
Dale Carnegie (1888-1955) was an American writer and lecturer. Born into poverty in Missouri, he ultimately and anti-climactically became a truck salesman. In How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1944) the author writes that he disliked his job...and his life. “I despised my job. I despised living in a cheap furnished room on West Fifty-sixth Street—a room infested with cockroaches” (p. xi). As you might anticipate, the author quit his job; however, you might not know that this author went on to become a worldwide phenomenon regarding self-help teaching.
After I finished the book; it wasn’t some catchy phrase that Carnegie wrote that caught my eye. It was someone he wrote about that changed my outlook. Carnegie wrote of a successful surgeon who stressed the importance of not worrying about tomorrow. The surgeon spoke about Jesus’ words: “Give us this day, our daily bread” (Matt 6:11, ESV).
After I returned the book to its rightful place, I sat at my desk for a bit while contemplating my Lord's words. Fortunately, it wouldn't take a theologian to understand my problem. I had allowed the aimless feeling that weighed me down to blind me to Jesus’ words and forgo any reliance on God. I had forgotten to rely on God for each day’s sufficiency. I had removed God from my life’s equation.
At that point, I resolved myself to no longer let my insane desire to seek pressure just to have that "opportunity-to-conquer" feeling control me. Instead, I would conquer each day through a reliance on my Lord for that day’s sufficiency. And I have done that now, for almost two years.
Since that decision, my blood pressure has returned to normal levels. I have truly found a greater peace… and the books in my library…well; they no longer look like furniture store props...or tombstones.
Carnegie, D. (1944). How to stop worrying and start living. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster.