I’ve been retired for almost 24 years now, so you think I would have just about learned all the things I needed to know about retirement? I’ll let you in on a little secret that I learned from a guy called Socrates.
The more you know, the more you realize you know nothing
He might not have said it in exactly those words, but you get the idea. Socrates has become a good friend of mine since I have retired. He is always giving me lessons that I need to learn. This particular message means to never stop learning. Just because you might be in a period where you no longer have to work for money, doesn’t mean you should lay back and stop learning.
A couple of other lessons he taught me is that you must question everything and think for yourself. Retiring doesn’t mean you shut your brain off and coast from there. If you do that, then you are often hit head-on with another saying
If you don’t use it, you lose it.
My friend Socrates didn’t teach me that one, but maybe he just used different words for the same message.
Finally, getting to the underlying point of this post. It’s been almost 40 years since the personal computer was invented, and soon after that came cell phones, tablets and such. These things revolutionized the way we work and play. It seems that after all that time, just about all of us have, to one degree or another, jumped on board. So, I was amazed to see just how many here at my RetCom have still not learned to accept these new tools.
I am told that there are many elderly folks here who just won’t accept anything in the digital mode. Everything needs to be done in with paper, as it was sixty years ago. During a recent two-year period, I visited a dozen or more retirement communities, and their use of digital technology varies widely. Some like my RetCom remain almost totally on paper, but there are also several others that use technology to communicate with their residents. One even went so far as to provide a digital tablet for those who didn’t have one. They are now 85% digital.
RJ's Corner 