Ellen Goodman has always been one of my favorite syndicated columnists, probably because she writes so brilliantly about feminism and social change. In fact, she’s been covering the feminist beat since the beginning of her career in the late 60s. The 60s and 70s must have been an exciting time for her, but I’m writing today to reflect on her last column printed in today’s paper. She is retiring.
In her final column, Ms. Goodman is reclaiming the phrase “letting yourself go.” She asks where will you go when you let yourself go? I can think of a few places I’d go when I can let myself go. I’ll go for a long walk on the beach, I’ll go to the movies, I’ll go soak in the tub, I’ll go have lunch with new friends, I’ll go walking downtown, I’ll go play my guitar for hours, I’ll go write some songs, I’ll go hang out in a bookstore, I’ll go play with my cats, I’ll go outside and pull weeds… Gee, I guess I’ll go do whatever I want and better yet, I’ll relax into possibilities I haven’t even considered yet!
While it’s true that I can and do all of those things mentioned above, I don’t often because my life is filled with responsibility and focus on a job and career I still enjoy. Ellen Goodman is looking on her career as a great gift. To leave a career with gratitude for what it brought allows us to open up to appreciate any and all new possibilities waiting around the corner once that focus fades.
She quoted herself in a column written when she was 30 years younger. She doesn’t give a context for why she wrote it at the time, I suppose I could Google it and maybe find out, but it stands alone as a timeless testament to any transition and I will quote it again here,
There’s a trick to the Graceful Exit. It begins with the vision to recognize when a job, a life stage, a relationship is over – and to let go. It means leaving what’s over without denying its validity or its past importance in our lives.
It involves a sense of future, a belief that every exit line is an entry, that we are moving on rather than out.
The trick of retiring well may be the trick of living well. It’s hard to recognize that life isn’t a holding action, but a process. It’s hard to learn that we don’t leave the best parts of ourselves behind, back in the dugout of the office. We own what we learned back there. The experiences and the growth are grafted onto our lives. And when we exit, we can take ourselves along — quite gracefully.
And so it goes, may you have a lovely and fulfilling retirement, Ellen.
