The El Capitan Principle of Retirement

Think of retirement as a solo climb up El Capitan. At first, the whole enterprise feels exhilarating. You have studied the route, checked your finances, calculated your pension, announced your plans, and begun climbing toward that glorious summit called Freedom. The office is shrinking beneath you. Meetings are disappearing into the mist. Somewhere far below, people are discussing Student Learning Outcomes without you.

Then, halfway up the granite wall, a gust of doubt hits you.

What the hell are you doing here?

You cling to the rock and suddenly reconsider the entire project. Retirement was a terrible idea. You were meant to work forever. Work gives you structure, identity, colleagues, purpose, deadlines, and a reason to put on pants before noon. Perhaps employment is the machinery keeping you alive. Remove it and the gears stop turning. Six months after retirement, they will find you sitting in a recliner at eleven in the morning watching a documentary about airport baggage systems while eating low-fat cottage cheese directly from the container.

Turn around.

Save yourself.

Go back to work.

Then you make the mistake of looking down.

The people below are specks. You have already told everyone you’re retiring. You have calculated your revenue streams. You have contacted CalSTRS and CalPERS. You have enrolled in Medicare Part A. You have begun arranging your health insurance. You have started describing ordinary events as “my last fall semester,” “my last opening-day meeting,” and “my last year of grading freshman essays.” You have spent so much time filling out retirement paperwork that returning to work would require filling out paperwork to recover from the paperwork you completed in order to stop working.

You realize that descending may now be more dangerous than continuing upward.

Call this the El Capitan Principle: the point in retirement when continuing toward the summit terrifies you, but you have climbed too far to descend safely.

This is not courage. Courage would imply that you have conquered your fear. You haven’t conquered anything. You are hanging from a granite wall wondering whether your career was actually a life-support system and whether removing it will cause your internal organs to shut down in alphabetical order.

But the choice has changed.

Earlier, you were deciding whether to retire. Now you are retiring.

So you tighten your grip, stop looking down, and continue climbing.

The summit awaits.