Don's World - Just a Glass of Wine and a Breeze

When you walked out of those Company doors for the last time, it was a fantastic feeling; and to be honest, for most people it was just a little scary.

But regardless you kept on moving, right into your new lifestyle as a retiree. You probably went home to your spouse and the two of you most likely spent a few days just enjoying your hard earned freedom and talking about what you were going to do with yourselves.

You may have taken a World Tour; or maybe you took a Cruise on one of those big party ships. Hell, maybe you just slept late for the first week or so of your retirement and enjoyed not waking up to an alarm clock. Whatever you did, it was part of your adapting yourself to being a different person from who you were to a new retiree with new and exciting life goals.

But whatever you did on those first days of your retirement eventually you realized one morning that you were now living with a more limited number of year left to you on your “Life Clock”.

I’m not talking about some form of alarm clock like the one that pushed you out of your bed all of the years of your youth before you retired.

I’m talking about your Life Clock.

Come On, you knew you had one, an end date where your body “gives Up The Ghost” so to speak. it’s just that most of your life you just ignored it.

Your Life Clock is that mythical thing residing in the back of everyone’s head. It’s always ticking and it’s always there to remind you that your days are numbered. It keeps reminding you that one day, relatively soon, your body will stop functioning.

An intelligent retiree is the one who recognizes that the number of days they have left to live in their bodies is now very limited. You know that all of those job and family related excuses that kept you from doing what you really wanted to do during your pre-retiree life are no longer relative.

You realize that as a retiree, and at your age, you now need to make the most of every day you have left.

So in order to enjoy the time we most likely have to be on this planet, we need to understand the reality of just how much longer we will in all probability live.

I could spend a lot of time at this point talking about the Statistics of Human lifespans, but I’m going to avoid that and just mention a few numbers we should all know.

No, this is not where I start talking about statistics and such, but what I mention here are factual and realistic.

Our government takes data from our national census and combines it with local birth and death data information on Males and Females along with other health information and they generate some very accurate reports on our population.

I will mention a few statistics terms for you though. If you can imagine from the data on millions of people the chart would be shaped like a bell. The very center number, at the top of the chart would be the Average of all of the numbers, so if you charted the death of people, either male or female the average of all deaths would be this top center point.

So, I looked on the web and here are a couple of the death predictions that I was able to find and show you;

76.1 - The Average Lifespan of a healthy White male.

81.1 - The Average Lifespan of an healthy White female

You can easily go onto the web yourselves and get these lifespan numbers for yourself; whether you are White, Black, Hispanic, Native American, etcetera. And you can slide your finger up and down the data tables and check exactly what your predicted probability of dying at the specific age you selected.

Think about it; if you are the exact age of the predicted average age of living, then you have already outlived half of all of the Americans the were born on the same year as you.

And knowing this, you also know that as you slide your finger further along the data tables and into the older predictions, the numbers you see are telling you that your probability of reaching that age you are pointing at are growing lower and lower, each year.

These kinds of death statistics are a reality check that we should all keep in mind as we think about how we will get the most from the years we have left.

Now that I’ve either confused you, or scared you with all of these numbers; the question you need to ask yourself is; What am I going to do today that will make my day a great one?

Are you fulfilled when you; go fishing, play Golf, Dance, Hike, watch Sunsets or Sunrises, socialize with your friends, work with your hands, help others, write, or whatever your true passion might be?

Then let’s all try to wake up every morning and do those things that make us happy; while we can.

Me? Well, regardless of what my numbers might be, sometimes I just want to take the moment, find a Sunset and then;

All I Want is a Glass of Wine and a Cool Breeze Blowing through the Palms.

‘NUFF Said!