At 83, businessman Richard Britton has retired – and he’s bored of doing nothing
For some time, I have followed an American YouTube chef called Jean-Pierre.
He recently announced that, after 50 years of almost non-stop work
in the catering industry, he was going to take a break. He tells the story of meeting an old friend (literally ‘old’) and casually asking him what his plans were for the day.
‘Nothin’. I ain’t goin’ to do nothin’,’ was the smug, contented reply.
For Jean-Pierre, the idea of doin’ nothin’ was completely alien after a totally absorbing, frenetic working life.
He had never experienced doin’ nothin’. That led to his taking a break and finding out, for the first time in his career, what it felt like.
Well, Jean-Pierre, I can tell you. It sucks. I inherited a strong work ethic from both my parents, who had to work hard through the war years to bring up their three children. Like them, I have worked hard all my adult life, totally committed to whatever I’ve been doing – and feeling fulfilled in being so.
After a career in the very early computer industry, followed by a variety of small businesses and, more recently, work as a county councillor, I have always been totally absorbed in whatever I’ve been involved with.
For the past 60 years, I have led a life of appointments, meetings, stuff to read and/or write, deadlines, things I should have done ‘last week’, places to go and people to see. But suddenly it’s done. It’s all over – finished. I’m retired at 83. No appointments, no deadlines, nobody waiting for me to call them – nobody calling me.
For six decades, work has been central to my life; my sense of purpose, identity and very being. It’s been who I am. Now its absence makes me feel as if I have been plunged into a void and I’m somehow fading from the world’s stage.
I sympathise with Spike Milligan’s intention to have his gravestone read ‘Was that it?’ That idea was suppressed by the church authorities – although he was allowed to have ‘I told you I was ill’ in Gaelic on his Winchelsea grave.
I’ve still got so much to offer the world. It just doesn’t seem right for me to accept that I have finished my life’s work and that I am now expected to make a profound transition from that busy, absorbing life, not just into leisure, but into a new way of ‘being’.
In this, the challenge is no longer to perform or produce, but to try to discover meaning and value in simply being. Surely that can’t be all that remains to fill whatever number of years I have left.
People tell me that freedom from ‘the shackles of work’ is liberating – an opportunity to discover ‘my true self’ – but work was my true self! My emotional state still demands an economic purpose.
I just can’t turn off the feeling that I have so much still to give and need to give: a lifetime of valuable experience; the motivation and drive to continue to play a part and make a contribution.
I’m just not ready for the world of doin’ nothin’ into which I have been plunged. It sucks.
