Different people retire at different stages but generally, there is such a thing called retirement because our body has reached a certain level of incapability. So you bring your work down to a lower level simply because if you push it beyond that, you may “retire” in a different way soon! Once you retire, there must be a shift of focus from economic and family concerns to something more spirituality oriented. The physical body has come with an expiry date.
Once you are over a certain age, however well taken care of you are, you are still a fragile life. Tomorrow morning the whole equation of your life can change, physically. We hope it doesn’t come to you but it is a possibility. Millions of people are going through it. Thinking it won’t happen to you is living in a fool’s paradise. Knowing the possibility and doing the right thing so that it doesn’t happen to you is the sensible thing.
So it is time you activate the other aspect which goes beyond this physical body. That is the spiritual part of you. For a person who knows only the body, old age is the greatest misery and fear. Everything becomes meaningless and burdensome when the body is threatened and begins to creak and groan. But if you have tasted something beyond the physical body, old age will not be a problem, it will be a blessing.
So once you reach a certain point in your life, you must allow at least a certain quota of your energy and life in that direction. If you put the whole of your life and energy in that direction there is nothing like it, but at least a little bit of your life should pursue that.
You should have done it right from day one because if you are a keen observer of life, from the very first day you are born there is a reminder of your expiry date. If you are not such a keen observer, by the time you are fifty there are sufficient reminders. As the body becomes more fragile by the day, if you don’t take these reminders into consideration and look beyond the possibilities of being physical, it would be a foolish way to exist.
Old age just won’t matter if something within you is very vibrant. When the moment of death comes you can smile and go without any sense of loss because it is not a loss. If life happens, death is a natural process. Being afraid of a natural process is unnatural. This fear has come because of a certain sense of ignorance and unawareness. We are not in touch with reality and we have gotten deeply identified with this body.
This has happened because we have not explored other dimensions. That is why, often, experience of life leaves most people wounded instead of wise. But if people with so much experience behind them could make their life’s experience into wisdom, their wisdom could be useful for the world in so many different ways.
~Sadhguru
