Retirement, Redundancy, Rejection: The Extreme Emotionality Of Endings

Learning to Transition Through

The potential of our lives' September Splendours (sculpture by Dale Chihuly, Kew Gardens)

This is the second article in a series that started with Late Work: From Recreation to Re-Creation from my FORBES archives, now behind a paywall.

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“Like a cliff edge,” says my friend Tom, “deep, unexpected and utterly confusing.” “Like suddenly donning a cloak of invisibility you can’t remove,” says Jacqueline. The sense, described by a famous economist, ‘of seeing my children routinely ignore my advice.” The interviewee who calls several times to ensure that he is not identifiable in my article because the wounds caused by his own redundancy remain so raw, even after a year and a successful transition. The emotions people describe in moving out of mainstream midlife towards their 3rd Quarters are unexpectedly raw and powerful.

“Mature man needs to be needed,” wrote Erik Erikson decades ago. When someone suddenly loses their sense of purpose, their identity, their cause or their community – sometimes all of these all at once, the reaction can be shockingly profound. This is particularly true for people who have been used to positions of power, reputation or influence.

“The sense of vulnerability – the feelings of being fragile, exposed, and assailable – takes various emotional forms,” notes Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot in her (highly recommended) book The Third Chapter, Passion, Risk and Adventure in the 25 Years After 50. “Some people feel an unfamiliar emptiness, a despondency; others, an unbridled rage; still others, a chronic anxiety.”