My husband had an uncle who lost his job at some point. Apparently he couldn’t find another and couldn’t face the disgrace of not having a job. Every day he got up, got dressed like usual, took the lunch his wife packed for him and left the house as if he were going to work. Every day for years. Until he could “safely” say he was retired.

They say that men define themselves by their work and women don’t. I’m thinking maybe they had in mind an earlier age in time.

I think I basically retired.

I’ve never had a normal job – well, when I was pregnant with our oldest daughter who just turned 35, I worked for The State of Wisconsin updating licensing for nursing homes. You don’t get much more normal than that, I suppose. Punched a clock, checked paperwork all day and could’ve made more money working at MacDonalds.

But generally speaking, I’ve always had jobs where I’ve made my own decisions, kept my own hours on a per project basis and noone really knew what I was doing or where I was doing it.

When I was in college I worked for a labor union – long since defunct – whose regional offices were 300 miles away in Chicago and national offices were in New York. My job was to show a strike film to rank-and-file around the state of Wisconsin. In 6 months I might have shown that film 3 times. It’s a family joke to this day.

But I turned into a responsible person at some point and  worked harder and put in more hours in my self-devised frameworks than lots of people do in the places where the clock gets punched.  No dropping the pencil mid-sentence at exactly 4 o’clock for me.

I planned building projects and supervised them going up on virgin hills. I took SOS calls when electricity went out in the middle of the night or contractors threatened to walk off the job. I spoke to the press at the sites of terrorist attacks, political rallies and at dramatic turns of events of all kinds. I solicited philanthropic funds all over the world.

Wow! I’m even impressing myself!

And then, about two years ago, I stopped.

It didn’t happen in a day, or a week or a month.

I started screening my calls from the media, taking only those from the largest agencies that I couldn’t ignore. I started skimming the newspaper, checking only one or two news sites and only once or twice a day.

All those articles about lowering your tension levels by giving up reading the news? They’re true. Ahhhh! How nice not to know. And what do we know from reading the news anyway? As Mark Twain said, “If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you’re misinformed.” Wise man.

I had stopped taking on new clients several years previously  in theory. I turned theory into reality. Slowly but surely, my “current projects”  finished up and became past clients.

I’d begun listening to dharma podcasts and found myself, more and more, listening to them on my morning walk instead of listening to music. And the music I listened to at the end of the podcasts changed. Until one day, or over a period of several months, I came to the realization that the principles had been soaked up into the very fabric of my thinking, feeling and  behavior and the calming music had become my music default.

I found a yoga class I loved and found that yoga added to meditation added to dharma equaled a peaceful happiness that served me and all those around me well.

Sounds idyllic, right?

There was this one little cloud on the horizon. When people would ask that question “So, what are you up to these days?” I heard myself hedging. Making the 3 clients I still handle sound like a real job. Embellishing the help I give a friend who’s directing a big project in the Galilee and the Negev.  Hinting at a busyness that, in actuality, has more to do with travelling around the country to see my granddaughters than anything else.

Had I become Gershon’s Uncle Sam? Metaphorically taking the packed lunch off to “as if” work every morning? Was my definition of myself really that dependent on my work and the status of what I do as I perceive it in the eyes of others?

I practiced the other night answering that question differently. No hints of greatness or fame. Her: “So, what are you up to these days?” Me: “I’m doing alot of yoga and meditation.” Her: Those are the main things you’re doing?!?”

YIKES!!

Me: “Yep.”

Oh, so proud of myself. I did it. I stopped packing my lunch. I retired.

Now I just have to worry about how it’ll be when Gershon retires. You know the adage – “For better or for worse, but not for lunch.”