Coprolite Newsletter, July 2006

We spent last weekend visiting our daughter and her family at a cabin they own near Prairie Du Chien, Wisconsin. It’s right on the Mississippi River, and the scenery is extraordinarily beautiful. Everybody loves the place, and considers it a wonderful getaway from the world. And yet, it’s not exactly what you would consider peaceful.

In front of the cabin, towboats chug up and down the river pushing long lines of barges. Speedboats and jet skis race by. Neighbors are constantly launching or retrieving their watercraft at a nearby ramp. A block away, fast trains whistle every few minutes on one of the busiest rail lines in the country.

On top of this, when my daughter and her husband spend time at their cabin, they usually are surrounded by multitudes of family and friends who somehow need to be fed and entertained. In spite of all this apparent stress and turmoil, they find their time at the cabin happy and soothing. How can this be?

I learned the answer to that many years ago while still working in the corporate world. Back in the 1970s and ‘80s, my team and I produced audio visuals for a large insurance company. Once a year, we went out of town to stage a convention for our agents. In those days, multi-image slide shows were all the rage. We had a massive rear-projection screen the width of a stage. Behind it were 16 to 20 slide projectors and a 16mm projector, plus our sound system and a primitive computer that controlled it all.

A typical day’s program on stage included some very elaborate slide shows — thematics, sales-leader recognition pieces, and promotions for the next year’s conference site. Usually these had been produced and programmed beforehand. However, it wasn’t until we were on site that we could combine the programs for all these shows, plus the live cues for background images between shows as well as speaker support slides, together into one massive program. Then we had to plan our slide-tray changes and rehearse it all. This involved grueling hours of work.

After one all-night programming session followed by a long day of staging the event, I was more than ready to turn in early to catch up on some sleep. The next morning, I found out to my amazement that John, one of my staff, had partied all night at cocktail soirees hosted by the company’s various agencies.

“How could you possibly stay up two whole nights in a row?” I asked him.

“Well, you see,” he explained with a smile, “there’s rest and there’s relaxation. I decided that what I needed was relaxation.”

And I believe that explains why a vacation getaway is enjoyable even when it’s full of hectic activity. It may not be any more restful than work, but it’s definitely more relaxing. You’re there because you want to be, and your intent is to have fun. At work, you’re doing what you have to, not what you choose to. That makes all the difference.

The same thing applies to retirement. My wife and I definitely do not have a restful retirement. We’re busier than ever. Visiting family. Partying with friends. Gardening. Traveling. Working with civic and church groups. There still are tasks and deadlines, like when we had regular jobs. But these are OUR tasks and deadlines. Being busy may not be as restful as sitting in a recliner, but like my friend John, we’ve learned that sometimes there are things more rewarding than rest.

Retirement is a blessing somewhat like getting away to that vacation hideaway on the river. It’s wonderful, not because you get to do nothing, but because you get to choose what you want to do. It’s peaceful not because there’s no noise, but because you learn to enjoy the noise you hear. We could all learn a lesson from John. In all stages of life, there’s rest and there’s relaxation. Relaxation is more fun.

––Wayne Adams
wayne@coprolites.com
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