A few weeks ago I read a great post from the fine folks at Millennial Revolution. The post was called “Is FIRE for Everyone?” FIRE stands for Financial Independence Retire Early. In the post she shared about a few people who had retired early but then had gone back to work due to boredom, loneliness and depression. She shared that she had recently read a book that talked about three things that you need in order to be happy. Those three things are…
1. Security
2. Satisfaction
3. Social
Security means you have enough money that you don’t have to worry about it. Satisfaction is what you get when the way you spend your day makes you happy and brings meaning and fulfillment. Social means that you have good friends.
She said that for those who retire early, obviously #1 is happening. The other two, however, are a bit trickier. For a lot of us, these two things are tied to our work, and when we’re no longer working, it can be difficult to find alternatives; hence the boredom, loneliness and depression.
I have not retired, though two years ago I did retire from my first career of being a pastor. Taking a job off the table gave me more time to focus on my business and investments, and that has in turn led to us being in a good place as far as #1 Security goes. But it’s also meant that these second two things have been tough.
My twenties and thirties were defined by passion. Our two moves across the country and then starting a church from scratch were fueled by passion. There were always lots of things missing in my life, but passion was always there. Though there were some negatives over being driven almost solely by passion, overall it led to some good things. Now that I’m out of vocational ministry, I’ve wondered what I’m passionate about. I love real estate. I love helping people buy and sell homes, and I love breathing life into old homes through the renovations we do. But it’s not the same kind of passion. So I’m in the process of thinking through those areas where I want to invest some time.
As far as this final piece, it’s tough to gauge that when we’re six months into various degrees of quarantine. Community is so different from what it was. I think we’re all having to figure what levels of social interaction we need to be healthy. There are probably some things we’ve been fine giving up; other things not so much.