STAYING ALIVE, STAYING RELEVANT
"My life isn’t over, and I’m not going to
sit in a rocking chair and take money
from the government.”
Colonel
Harland Sanders, founder of KFC
I will
complete 62 this July. If I was a government employee, I would have been a ‘retired’
old-man, living on his monthly pension, by now. But, being a self-employed
fellow, I know, that my pension will come only if I - what that famous line
says – ‘get up, dress up and show up, each morning’ … Yes, no matter how I feel
when I get up in the morning!
My cousin
brother, Stany is 65, and retired from his job with a well-known Petro-chemical
company, some years ago. But, if you look at him, he looks much younger than I
am. Being passionate about music, he took up a teaching assignment at an
international school where he is a popular music teacher even now. Besides this, he and his wife, Martina, have
been leading the church choir group for years now. So, at 65, he still finds
himself relevant and productive… Like they say in the context of Hindi films,
he now plays ‘mature character-roles’ in his films! This afternoon, he shared
this video with me:
Now, stories of
people reinventing themselves, making a second-coming, or starting all over
again etc., etc.… have always been long floating around. Yes, in this video,
the speaker recalls how Amitabh Bachchan rose from his ashes at 57 and still
going strong at 77… how, at 62, Colonel Harland Sanders, through the Great
Depression, lost his hotel business, but started selling fried chicken on the
roadside and went on to build, the now
world-famous, KFC… and, how at 45, Boman Irani, switched gears, to start his acting career in Bollywood. We have
many more similar stories to inspire us. I remember reading about the founder
of ISCON, Swami Prabhupada. He had never set his feet outside India; but he travelled
by a ship to America when he was 70! The rest is ISCON’s inspiring history!
Similarly, I was hugely inspired by the story of Mary Kay, the charismatic
founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics. She started her famous beauty-venture after her
retirement, but with just five-hundred dollars in her savings!
‘Jab Tak Hai
Jaan’ is not just the title of Yash Raj Chopra’s
last film, it’s what his life chronicled. At 80, he produced and directed this
romantic film and passed away once he completed it, without waiting for its
release… He died with his boots on… and doing what he always loved to do – romantic
films!
The same is the
life story of Dev Anand and M.F. Hussain… Lata, Asha, and a Clint Eastwood…
In
Life, staying relevant by living a productive life is one’s conscious choice,
just as retiring, too, is. Body may age and mind may show slow reflexes… You
may not be able to stay at the top of your game as you did in your twenties,
thirties and forties…
But, then, what
is this nonsense called – ‘Staying at the top of your game’?
You simply keep
your zest alive… You simply get up, dress up and show up each morning, no
matter how you feel… You simply refuse to live on your ‘pension’… simply refuse
to say, ‘I am a spent force’ or ‘I am done with’!
Staying
relevant, therefore, is very important for staying alive. Else, you and I may
have to spend the rest of our lives - our mature years - staring at the ceiling,
day in and day out!
Let me ‘retire’,
for now!
GERALD D’CUNHA
Pic.: pixabay
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