As retirement begins to feel less distant, the balance between saving money and truly living becomes more complicated. During Japan’s long holiday season, I spent quiet but meaningful time with my family — visiting my son, seeing my mother for Mother’s Day, traveling with my wife and daughter, and celebrating my wife’s 60th birthday. None of it was extravagant by modern standards, but all of it reminded me that good health, family gatherings, and ordinary happiness may exist only within a surprisingly limited window of life. This reflection is about aging, uncertainty, desire, and how to spend the finite time that remains.
This year’s long holiday season was a rather relaxing one for me.
I visited my son (who thankfully does not live very far away), went to see my mother in Tokyo for Mother’s Day, traveled to a hot spring resort with my wife and daughter who had temporarily returned from New York, and celebrated my wife’s 60th birthday.
All of these occasions involved a certain amount of expense, of course, but every one of them became a memorable experience.
As I think about life after retirement, I know I need to be more careful about spending money.
But if I focus too much on saving, eventually I may end up doing nothing at all.
At the age of 62, the fact that I can still walk comfortably, gather together with all four members of my family, and enjoy life with our two-year-old Flat-Coated Retriever, Anne, may actually place me in a rather fortunate moment of life.
Perhaps this is the last relatively carefree period I will ever have.
Eventually, my back will bend, I will need a cane, either my wife or I will become ill first, and Ann too will grow old.
The time left to me is finite, and probably much shorter than I imagine.
If I knew exactly when these things would happen, perhaps I could prepare myself accordingly. But such things are known only to God.
That does not mean I should live in fear of them.
To spend every day fearing illness, aging, earthquakes, or typhoons would also feel somehow wrong.
If the amount of time I have left were suddenly made visible, what would I actually do?
There are countless things I still want to experience before I die.
If I started listing them all, there would be no end to it. Worse still, I might spend so much time dreaming about life that life itself quietly passes by.
In the end, people live because there is always something they still want to do.
But simply following desire alone does not help us grow.
By continuing to carry the burdens that naturally come with life — studying, working, struggling, learning — perhaps I can make the limited time I have left into something truly meaningful.
Time may be limited, but perhaps that is precisely why it deserves to be lived carefully.
・・・
Vocabulary for Learners
- finite — 限りのある
- carefree — 気楽な、心配のない
- accordingly — それに応じて
- countless — 数え切れないほど多くの
- quietly passes by — 静かに過ぎ去る
- burden — 負荷、重荷
- meaningful — 意味のある、充実した
- in the end — 結局のところ
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