Need to be recognized persists in retirement
We live, for most of the year, in a pleasant golf community in Southwest Florida. Though not as flashy as some of the surrounding communities, it is an attractive place to spend the winter months, playing golf, swimming, or engaging in a dozen other activities.
Most of our neighbors here are solid, middle-class citizens who have done well for themselves in scores of different careers and businesses. Though few make note of it, their list of life’s accomplishments is large. They have succeeded in life and are now trying to live out their golden years in relative comfort.The hunt for these achievement awards starts out when we are young. The nuns used to put a gold, silver or bronze start on our school papers, indicating their approval of our work. Later, many levels of academic achievement come our way, perhaps ending in a scholarship to college and a very good job afterwards. Promotions and raises speckle our careers, indicating higher levels of achievement. Or maybe, you are just able to earn a ton of money that signals that you have arrived. The media, company newspapers and other vehicles let everyone know that you have done well. But then, retirement happens and after a bit, sometimes one wonders if anyone still knows that you are alive and occupying space on the planet.One would think that a lifetime of successes, with the entire array of medals, plaques and achievement awards collected, would be enough recognition. People would no longer need the “Trophy walls” that are usually left behind in business offices to impress prospective clients or intimidate rivals. Or maybe, to remind one of past glories.“Not so,” I would say. In many of the casual golf matches or tennis games that you watch, you get the vibe that this is a gladiatorial contest to the death. Charming men and women, in their late seventies or mid-eighties, play cards or Mah Jong with the intensity of a Gotterdammerung-like struggle, the winner of which will take over China. The loser of course must have to leap off a tall building in a fit of mournful atonement, or so one would think by the grave intensity of the contests.What is it that fuels this need for peer recognition? What does winning a Bocce match, getting the most correct answers in a trivia contest mean? Is this an innate drive for excellence? Is it a striving to “be the best that one can be?” Or is it something simpler? Perhaps, it is the need for a simple acknowledgement that these folks are still active, alert and in there, pitching in the ballgame of life. The rousing cheers of the arena, now long gone, are replaced with the odd plastic trophy or mention in the club newsletter, that this person or that is a “Champion.” Friends and neighbors all make mention of the award and for a brief time, the treasured limelight has returned its spotlight on the achiever.So, when next you see a red-faced, older tennis player grasping his racket, with a death grip, or a tensed-up golfer wielding a six-iron like a death club and staring with demonic intensity at an opponent, sigh to yourself and mutter “It’s okay pal. We know that you are alive and in there trying.” Hopefully, the aging combatant will settle down and not let his aggressively wild stroke be his last.
Joseph Xavier Martin is a resident of Estero.
This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Need to be recognized persists in retirement
