In his play, “As You Like It”, William Shakespeare penned his famous outline of the Seven Stages of Man; Infant, Schoolboy, Lover, Soldier, Justice, Pantaloon (Old Man), and Second Childhood.
Rating my current lifestyle and picking a stage, as much as I’d like to say I’m at stage five — Justice with the round belly and wise sayings — I’d have to realistically admit that I’m somewhere between stages six and seven — Pantaloon and Second Childhood.
I’ve gone through all the other stages in clearly defined ways. Infant, Schoolboy and Lover stages were all self-evident and all in my youth.
Most of my early adult years I was a working-world Soldier, which morphed into the aforementioned Justice with the growing waistline and head full of wisecracks. Obviously though, I’m past every one of those stages.
Obvious only to me.
I say that because a conversation with a friend recently caused me to conduct another of my ongoing self examinations. I don’t recall the exact question, but it was along the lines of “Do you miss working these days” with the word “working” carrying more than the usual “what’s new” kind of load. Upon just a little introspection with a little bit of honesty, I have to admit that I really haven’t “worked” in quite some time.
This is going to sound wrong no matter how I say it, but by work I mean the kind of productive things I did as a self employed Title Insurance agency owner and not the work I do as a guest teacher in some of our area’s schools.
In my former career, I routinely hit the office at 8 a.m., then conducted all the things necessary to keep a business afloat until day’s end. Anyone self employed understands the onus of being responsible for everything that happens. It was much more mentally taxing than physically, but I was used to it.
The guest teacher is practically the opposite. The actual teacher has left notes for me and in the event of any kind of issues, every school has other trained professionals ready to bail me out. Where once I was the sole source of authority, my existence in the school system, while important, is anything but authoritative.
Whatever muscle it is that powers a person through a nine-hour day, for me, has atrophied beyond return. It’s as much a mental muscle as a physical one which means that I honestly don’t think I have the stamina or attention span to keep on task an entire day.
Returning to the conversation that spawned this whole train of thought, I told the guy that while I missed the conversations, the closings, and the stimulation that the industry was filled with, the drive to do it all day, all week just no longer existed. I guess by Shakespeare’s definition, I HAD advanced from the realm of Soldier and Justice to Pantaloon (Old Man) with Second Childhood in the not too distant future.
It’s been eight years since I left the real estate title business and there are things that I miss about it, but not enough to make me wish I still had an all-day job. I love thinking about it though because it encourages me to not just sit around watching television or scrolling the internet.
Continuing to hold a day job, particularly one that includes me interacting with our future generations, keeps me from creating that awful “silo” that many lonely senior citizens develop.
As usual Shakespeare knew things 500 years before I did, including knowing where many of us end up.