What are your retirement plans?

Twelve years ago, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW) announced that one out of four seniors aged 65 and older suffers from dementia or its pre-condition. According to a recent TV commercial by a major insurance company, one out of three people also suffer from dementia.

What is needed for a happy retirement, or a fulfilling second life? Finland has been ranked No. 1 in happiness for eight consecutive years. Bhutan, which was featured in a previous article, lists the following as components of happiness.

Components of Happiness

• Livelihood

• Health

• Education

• Community vitality

• Time Use Allocation

• Environment Ecosystems

• Culture

• Politics

• Mental health

When you think about your retirement plans, what kind of lifestyle do you want to maintain or start? Will you work? Will you work or not?

Work, whether volunteer or part-time, often gives people meaning and a sense of purpose to their day. Without it, people lose motivation and passion, increasing the likelihood that they could become “one out of three.

From wanting what we don't have to looking for what we do have

We are not special people.

After retirement and the release from responsibility and obligation, we lose interest in something, and our depleted self just stands at the entrance of the rest of our lives in a daze.

But whether life has been boring or futile so far, there are always, always skills and resources that have been persevered and accumulated, albeit as a result, on a daily basis.

Professor J. Baird Callicott, a professor of environmental ethics, said that development should not be tailored to people's needs or obligations. Convenience, comfort perhaps, but that development loses sight of who we are and robs us of our dignity.

When we think of a place as a living organism and people as its parasites, we must respect the natural flow of the place based on its history, and we must respect the parasite, the people, to adapt to the origin of the place, a kind of detour that creates dignity in the relationship between place and people.

We have lived systematically, responding to needs and under obligation. We have become replaceable human beings, deprived of dignity as a result of doing what is right in front of us.

But we have gained some skills and resources, albeit in a roundabout way.

It is time for us to “look for something” that we do not realize we have, to give it back to this place where we live, and to rebuild our relationship with the place.

The time has come.

It could be picking up trash, talking to neighbors, watching over children, caring for parents, planting flowers, participating in municipal events, cooking meals, etc.

Learn about the place and what kind of place you are living in.

When we give up the self-centered demands and desires we have made, good or bad, and respect the place, we become, for the first time, irreplaceable and special human beings.

Not the cool hero, the heroine.

Anti-hero, ugly, shitty, but...

Here comes the real hero heroine.