How would a perfect day in your 70s look like?
We don’t want to be isolated, hours away from each other. We want each other today, and tomorrow, and for the rest of our days.
On a Monday morning, my trainer and I talk about retirement. It’s just the two of us at the gym. Not surprising, as it’s rained all night and nobody wants to get out of bed when it’s cold and wet. I’m there because, well, I don’t allow myself to think about not being there. As long as it’s light and dry enough for me to walk the one kilometre to the gym, I will show up. As long as I don’t think about it too much and convince myself I can skip a day and sleep in. Because then I will skip all days. And then what?
So, it’s just the two of us and we talk since no one else is there to play their obnoxious music and I need a distraction from how my muscles ache, how my body lurches when I drop into a squat, how my back arches to ruin my form, how wary I am of the weights he hands me. 5kg dumbbells. He sees the uncertainty in my eyes and switches them out for the 3kg.
“Try these instead,” he says, correcting my form. I find that I can handle 3kgs, keep my back straight, and have a conversation. So, retirement.
He says he wants to be happy and peaceful when he’s old. Still fit, still healthy, living away from the chaos of Nairobi in his native Homa Bay, keeping some cattle and chicken. The standard Kenyan retirement dream, really. I want more details.
“How would a perfect day in your 70s look like?” I ask. It’s a question I ask often. So much more comes out when people are forced to imagine an ideal day in the life of their future selfs. They’re forced to go beyond outlines and give details, colouring in and adding texture to create a full image. Unearth what is truly important to them.
“I want a studio, just like this. I want to train kids in the village for free. So I will probably spend my mornings tending to livestock, then the afternoons with my kids. Training them, ensuring they do their homework, that they cultivate discipline and do well in school. My studio will have a place for them to sleep as well, for those who don’t have homes,” he says.
It’s a good plan. I don’t know much about my coach’s life but I know that he has four children; two teenagers and and two under 10. He isn’t romantically involved with their mothers anymore. I say it’s interesting that he intends to build a life outside of conventional family bonds. He shrugs.
“Kids grow up and move on and then you have to deal with yourself,” he says.
My friends and I have been talking a lot about retiring together. We envision communal living; separate houses but shared facilities. A shared gym, garden, pool, office, laundry area and parking space. A shared life where we borrow salt from each other, go on long walks, sit and drink tea, bask in the sun, take each other to the hospital, cook each other delicious dinners, go grocery shopping, celebrate and grieve and play and worry and plot and plan and live together without having to figure out the logistics of how we’ll get to each other.
This future shared life is beginning to take on an urgency. Perhaps we shouldn’t wait until retirement. Perhaps it is something we can do before we’re too old. A plan for our 50s, when kids are out of the house, and we still have some skin elasticity and flexible enough joints to cultivate new gardens, new routines, new lives. Imagine how nice? Soon, this life plan will exit the realm of magical thinking and grow roots in reality. Soon, we’ll start plotting and planning. Actively choosing. Directing resources accordingly. Making trade offs, abandoning divergent paths.
I was recently talking to my mother about an investment opportunity that had come up. Her neighbour wants to sell his piece of land; would I consider buying and developing it? He’ll even give me a discount because my mother asked nicely. She lives close enough to town that her village is considered prime real estate, with a prime real estate price tag attached to it. It’s now a village in name only. It’s growing, and fast, an enthusiastic participant in the race towards urban creep. Several universities are within commuting distance, and it’s become quite popular with young people just entering the workforce. All these people need places to live and everyone is building apartments. Would I want to buy the land and build one too?
Ultimately, my answer had to be no. First, because I don’t want to be a landlord. Second, and most importantly, because buying that land would delay or stop my early, communal, retirement dreams. I’m consciously making decisions that nudge my life where I want it to go. So are my friends, in their own ways.
An emerging theme of my 30s is how deeply serious life is. Everything feels a bit more consequential now, more defining. You must make choices, you really can’t have everything. But also, you don’t want everything. You want nice days spent with people you love doing things you like. A life spent in service to your truest self.
"An emerging theme of my 30s is how deeply serious life is. Everything feels a bit more consequential now, more defining. You must make choices, you really can’t have everything."
You put it so well. It's especially hard when you have to give up some dreams you had in exchange for other bigger dreams or comforts. It's like chess, you have to give up some pieces to make progress.
You should watch 'I'll See You In My Dreams' on Netflix because this is very much the theme.