Until I retired, I thought “the place where I work” and “the place where I live” were separate.
The company is where you work. The home is where you rest. Each has a different role. I took that for granted.
But some time after I retired, it suddenly hit me.
The company was not just a place to work.
It was a place that connected me to the world.
- Between Shifts, I Did Show Up
- It Was Only Half My Own Town
- After Retirement, Days When I Talk to No One Become Normal
- No One Will Do It, So I Will Do It
- From the Elders, from the Young, Even from Bad Examples
- How the Head of the Association Handles Things Is Politics on a Small Scale
- After Retirement, I Have to Move on My Own
Between Shifts, I Did Show Up
It may sound like an excuse, but in more than forty years of work, I always worked shifts. Four days of work and two days off. I repeated that with day shifts and night shifts.
If there was a meeting of the neighborhood association on my day off, I showed my face. It is not that I had nothing to do with it at all. But on days that clashed with work, I asked my wife to go.
In other words, my wife kept half of what goes on in the neighborhood in her head. Only half was in my own head.
It Was Only Half My Own Town
After I retired and had time, I took on an officer role in the neighborhood association, which people in Japan call the chonaikai. The first thing I thought was this.
“I only know half of this town.”
The half that my wife knew, I am only now trying to learn for myself.
“You have lived here for 60 years, and almost everyone here is a stranger to you? That cannot be.” My wife scolded me.
I had no answer. I could say I could not go because of work. But I also feel that was not the only reason. Things worked out if I left them to my wife, so I did not try to learn about the neighborhood.
After Retirement, Days When I Talk to No One Become Normal
After I retired, every day became a day off.
I have more time than I need. But strangely, my world did not grow. I feel it got smaller instead.
Suddenly, I no longer see the “same faces” I dealt with through work. At home, days when I talk to no one become normal. Even when I go shopping at the supermarket, all I hear is “thank you” at the register.
When I was at the company, I saw the same faces every day, like it or not. Only after I retired did I understand that this meant “I was connected to the world.”
No One Will Do It, So I Will Do It
Nobody wants to be an officer of the neighborhood association. The older people say “I am too old now.” The young people say “I am busy with work.” People like us, stuck in the middle, take turns doing it.
No one will do it, so I will do it.
I took it on for that simple reason. It is not that I had any deep attachment to it.
But after I took it on, I finally started to see some things.
From the Elders, from the Young, Even from Bad Examples
When you become an officer, you start dealing with all kinds of people in the neighborhood.
Older people who have lived here a long time know a lot about the history of the area and what happened long ago. “This road used to be like this.” “That house came to be that way because of this.” Information that would never be in a book or on the internet comes out of their mouths.
The young people, in turn, see things in ways I do not know. How they use social media, how much distance they keep from their neighbors, what raising children is like now. When I listen, I notice, “Oh, so that is how they think.”
Of course, there are people I do not get along with. People who think in a completely different way, people who believe only their own opinion is right, people who do not understand no matter how many times I explain.
Meeting people like that is also a kind of lesson. They are bad examples. I think, “I do not want to become like that.” It gives me a chance to look again at how I behave.
Useful information and useless information may be about half and half. But it is not zero. When I meet people, I learn something. That much is certain.
How the Head of the Association Handles Things Is Politics on a Small Scale
Since becoming an officer, I have come to think that a neighborhood association is politics on a small scale.
How things are run is completely different depending on who becomes the head. Poor planning, strange priorities, careless explanations, deciding things alone. The same things I saw at the company in my working years happen again here.
Many times I think, “If it were me, I would do it this way.”
At those times, I sometimes give a small, pointed piece of advice. Sometimes they listen. Sometimes they brush it aside.
And then I think, maybe the job of the Prime Minister is, in the end, just a bigger version of this. One small judgment can change how the country moves. Even if I think “if it were me,” my opinion does not reach them, because I am not there on the ground.
What happens in the neighborhood association also happens in the country. I think that is just how it is.
After Retirement, I Have to Move on My Own
There is something I understood after I retired.
When I was at the company, the world came to me. The same faces, the same voices, the same work. Even so, it was the world.
After you retire, nobody comes to you. If you do not move on your own, the world itself disappears.
I took on the officer role only because “no one will do it.” But there, I meet people, I listen, I think, and sometimes I speak up. Because of that, I feel the world has come back a little.
You can gain as much knowledge as you want on the internet.
But wisdom is still, even now, inside people.
Meet, talk, and feel.
That is the only way I know to stay connected with the world after retirement.
Other things I have written about life after retirement:
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