introduction

“This retirement lark isn’t what it’s cracked up to be”: Norm at the Men's Shed North Shore.
And indeed it isn’t. In conversations with men from a wide variety of backgrounds at   Men’s Sheds throughout the North Island and fellow campers on a recent trip to California retirees revealed to me their strong sense of loss - of identity, purpose, role, meaning, acknowledgement, belonging, company, companionship, self-esteem, structure, stimulation, coping, confidence, health, and (most sadly) even hope: “I feel like someone has a gun to my head” - Pete in Ojai.

Unfortunately far too many men are finding that retirement is far from the laid-back holiday they saved for and looked forward to for many years. Instead of Club Med, they find themselves alone, unwanted, and bored. Some self-medicate with drugs and/or alcohol (with predictable results), others slip into depression, some become couch potatoes. Experiencing such a powerful and overwhelming sense of loss leads to rapidly declining physical and mental health - statistics reveal that an alarming number of men die within two years of retirement.

In their book “How to Avoid retirement & Stay Alive” David Bogan & Keith Davies point out: “For some people retirement is their own personal living nightmare...on a certain date their lives cease to have meaning and they become valueless”, the authors regard the notion of “retirement” as a dangerous virus which leads to a living death and should be eradicated from one’s thought processes. “Retire - to put aside from use....remove from view...withdraw from society”.

In his book “The Psychology of Retirement - coping with the transition from work” Derek Milne says that retirement “is too often a surprisingly stressful life event for which many individuals are ill-prepared”. Whilst many men may have a financial plan, far too few have any idea how they are actually going to fill their days - and find the transition to a life of leisure difficult, if not impossible, to make.

This blog will look at as many aspects and angles of this crisis as possible, and attempt to provide some solutions.