"All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind."

- Aristotle

There was a time when I really thought it possible to have it both ways, the career to pay the bills, the avocation to pay the soul. I realize the naivety of this now as my career consumes more and more of my time, energy and frankly saps my creative mind. I guess that's why people eventually retire from the career that has sustained them over the years, and there is always that inevitable question form one's co-workers "what are you going to do with all your spare time...."

Personally I don't think this is going to be much of a problem for me - I have such a backlog of ideas and half-begun projects that I am pretty sure I could be carried forward without a boring day well into the next century. But not everyone is like that - my parents were pretty well booked up through their retirements, but I know a lot of friends whose parents just don't seem to know how to cope. They travel for the sake of travel, not for the eagerness to learn the secrets of the Dead Sea but to have lunch on a ship-board buffet and play a hand of cards in the casino. Instead of scraping the paint off an old chair, they call Sears and have a beer while they wait.

I guess it would be wrong of me to challenge that if it is truly what someone has relished as retirement goals for years - but I have to doubt it. Who of us slogs through years of paperwork on our desks with the dream in mind of nothing more than an ottoman and re-runs of Hollywood Squares? So where does the ambition go? Do we really lose interest, do we cease to love adventure, do we forget how to strip the paint off a chair? Of course not. It's all still right there, coated over by a numb sealant left behind by years of career - like an oil slick coating the feathers of a Murre. It takes some careful cleaning to get it off, to set the wild bird free. The Murre might look bewildered at first, but the story it tells of its time in the hands of the stranger who preened it will become legend for generations. We should only be so lucky.