What's Going On Here?
As the end of my 35-year career in education approached, I began to get questions from the colleagues I would be leaving behind. Most were too kind/polite to ask the obvious (out loud, at least)–“What took you so long?”–but many, who knew how completely I embraced my work, wanted an answer to the Big Question: “What will you do now?” Without a schedule to follow, a curriculum to cover, a problem to solve, I would be “free,” but that freedom would require me to fill in the blanks, to find meaning and purpose in whatever remained of my life. Yikes. Celebratory retirement parties, adequate financial resources, and all my friends’ best wishes notwithstanding, this was a sobering reality. My basic response to sobering reality is almost always laughter. In this case, Mr. Peanutbutter’s philosophy works pretty well for me. On the other hand, I am not a Labrador Retriever. Like Diane, I feel an undeniable urge to find or, more accurately, make meaning in what I know to be a m...