The trickiest challenge of retirement is doing what one likes. You’ve got the day off, week off, your life off, now what?

Most lives are lived on treadmills, in harness, shackled to one’s oar, pick your metaphor. We do what we have to, no option it seems, either this or else. In school one needs to show up on time, do homework, suck up to teachers, be cool, whatever it takes to advance one’s inadvertent agenda. We know what we want, we think, only what we want is what we’ve been programmed to want by parents, contemporaries, commerce, teachers, milieu, etc. We pirouette on cue like circus dogs.

Career commits us to a ladder. Ladders are unidirectional: you can go up or down but not sideways. You can jump, of course, but only once, and regaining lost eminence isn’t easy. Marriage and kids commit us to a chute without convenient off-ramps. You can bolt, of course, but not often or without cost. You may be too busy to notice how busy you are. Freedom means freedom whether to mow the lawn – today or tomorrow.

Then – congratulations! – released from the prison of expectations, you stand blinking in the unaccustomed sun, free – as never before – to do what? Be what? Time unoccupied hangs heavy, may hang you by the neck until dead.

Success here often proves its opposite. Bigshots retiring boast how busy they are with this board and that project, this demand on their time. They (ominous analogy) “never miss a beat.” Since they crave congratulations, I congratulate them, instead of condoling, “Poor you!” Until we’re free to choose, we’ll never know who we are. Some people – maybe many – don’t wish to make their own acquaintance. For me, encountering myself is the fun of being. “Who are you, Carll, really?”

From a daunting plethora of possibilities, how to decide what one “likes”? Take me, for example.

I’ve a list of things I want to do as long as my arm and time’s running short. I’ve enough irresistible books shelved to busy me till I’m a hundred and fifty and I keep buying more. I want to see friends, travel, spend time with the grandkids. I used to want to learn languages but I’ve given up that pipe dream, lacking the wit or grit to get it done. The music I long to hear! And, oh yeh, the masterpieces I pine to pen! And Henry’s pleading for a walk. And I keep shortchanging Jane…

And then I want to do… nothing. This morning, I’d meant to be writing something else. But then that first sentence collared and detained me, “You’re coming with us, fella.” I shrug. What choice but to comply?

In retirement, I’m haunted by all I might be doing and am not. This never happened before. In the traces (another metaphor), if I did all I could, what more could be asked? Retirement insists I make the most of my time – but what does “most” mean?

Some of my contemporaries feel released by retirement to loll in the sun. They have done enough. Whatever they do is OK because nothing matters much. I envy their serenity – and admire their practicality. They’re right, of course – nothing does matter much. Only this truism contradicts the absurd urgency of my gut. I’m certain (don’t laugh) everything I do matters immensely, judges me, measures my worth. If I write well today, maybe I’ll write… don’t get me started! If I keep trudging after that bizarre star in the sky, like those three wise codgers, I may find my way to the redemption of mankind.