Some time ago, a friend of mine who had worked for the same company for nearly thirty years, was nearing retirement. He wasn’t quite sure if he was looking forward to retirement or not, as he still had some doubts as to what he would do with all the extra spare time. He worried about whether he would find enough to keep himself occupied, or would he soon become bored and stagnate in his later years. Would he miss the routine of getting up and going to work each day? What about his work colleagues, would he miss the daily chat and banter that had been a part of his life for so long?

Fortunately for him, he worked for a very enlightened company who arranged to send him on a series of retirement seminars. These he found both interesting and very useful and covered a broad range of subjects, including to his surprise, a short course on basic cooking and housekeeping. He also found a lot of people on the course who said they had the same concerns as himself. There were a number of guest speakers and towards the end, one of these who had been retired for some time offered his audience thus advice. “Most of the things I worried about seemed to disappear as soon as I left work, but I did find three things to be most important. First, show concern for other people. Second, try to learn something new each day and Third, remain cheerful at all times and I’m sure you will all enjoy your new found leisure time.”

That old adage, “Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone,” springs to mind. We all have our problems, but working or retired; we prefer to be around cheerful people.

What happens to a person in this life is less significant than what happens within them.