Chasing Validation

Almost every day, I run into someone who asks me how retirement is going. My default response is usually something like, “Great!”—and that’s partially true. But the truth is more layered.

We live in a world where so much of our identity is wrapped up in what we do: our jobs, our affiliations, our loyalties, our roles. We over-identify with being an employee, a parent, a believer, a voter, a fan. These roles can give us a sense of belonging, but they can also tether us too tightly to labels that were never meant to hold the fullness of who we are.

Now that I’ve stepped into retirement, I’m learning what it means to let go of those identities. Over the years I’ve been many versions of “Tim”:

University chaplain—no longer.  Church professional—nope.  Father to two sons—even that role is shifting as they grow into their own fullness.

That former life, this emerging life. And in between, the invitation to ask: Who am I without the labels?

The deepest part of me—the part Zen calls “my original face before my mother was born”—doesn’t seem to care much what name or title I carry now. Titles, achievements, what I say when asked, “So, what do you do?”—I can feel those attachments slowly losing their grip.

And with that loosening comes something surprising: I find myself less interested in the old, grand existential questions that once consumed me as a young seminarian—What is life for? Why are we here? What happens after death?  Is there a God? These days, I sense that life isn’t asking me to figure it out but to wake up.

Perhaps the only real invitation is to participate fully in the moment at hand. To breathe into presence with family, friends, the turning of the seasons. To live as if each moment is the most important moment of my life.

If I’m honest, I wish I had spent less time chasing validation and more time giving the world my undivided attention—receiving its ordinary magic with reverence. I wish, too, that I had spent less time poring over theology and church history, and more time with the treasures of literature, poetry, music, and the visual arts—the places where human longing and divine mystery meet in colors, words, and sound.

I wish I had been introduced earlier to other streams of wisdom that run alongside and beyond my own tradition: the ecstatic poetry of Sufism, the flowing surrender of Taoism, the breath of Buddhism, the mystical pathways of Kabbalah, the silence of the Rhineland mystics, the reverence of indigenous traditions for the land and all living beings. What an expansion of heart that would have been—what a broadening of vision, to see how Spirit moves in countless forms across time and culture.

And yet, even these regrets carry a gentle teaching: it is never too late to see more, to listen more deeply, to honor the vast chorus of wisdom traditions that invite us into presence. Retirement, in its way, is a second apprenticeship—an invitation not to accumulate more knowledge or credentials, but to awaken to beauty, to mystery, and to the gift of being here at all.

Choosing to live fully present in this very short life is no small thing. It will look different for each of us. It will set us apart. It may even feel countercultural—perhaps un-American. And yet, what a beautiful, freeing way to spend the one life we’ve been given.

So, the next time our paths cross, please do ask me how retirement is going. Just know that my answer might be less about what I do—and more about how I am learning to simply be.