What Gives Me A Sense of Accomplishment at Age 71

by James Wallace Harris

When we were little kids grownups would ask: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” That plants a seed in us that we should have a goal for the future, to plan to do something and accomplish things. When we were little, we’d tell the grownups we wanted to be astronauts or rock stars, because those were the exciting glamourous occupations we knew about.

As we got older, we learned that becoming an astronaut requires getting advanced science degrees, and becoming a rock star means learning how to play the guitar and sing which takes ten thousand hours of practice, neither of which we really want to do.

As we got older we learned that just finishing doing anything had its own rewards. The trouble was learning what we like to do. I had to work at many shit jobs before I was 25 to learn what I actually liked doing, which was working in a nice office, messing with computers, and having coworkers who would become friends. Helping someone else accomplish their goals by programming a computer was what I eventually discovered I like doing. I found working at a university that helped other people to become what they wanted to be fulfilling to me.

Before we retire we think about all kinds of big things we want to do after we quit work. I thought about moving to New York City or living in England, or moving to a retirement community with a lot of social activities. But those things were like dreaming of becoming an astronaut when I was a kid. The reality of retirement was quite different. Susan and I decided to stay in the home we had. And my health problems made me not want to travel.

However, the urge to do something is still there. And even as I get older and can do less physically, I still have this desire that I should have a goal for the future, and to accomplish something. What’s rather fascinating is where and how I get my sense of accomplishment every day.

Nowadays, the future isn’t so far off. It’s either, “What am I going to do tomorrow,” or “What will I do today.”

My goals have become smaller and smaller too. A big one recently was cleaning out the attic. Our friends Anne and Tony came over and helped us get everything down, and now Susan and I are going through all the boxes and suitcases stacked up in the dining room to get rid of that stuff. When that task is done it will give me a reasonably big sense of accomplishment.

But I don’t need big things to accomplish to find satisfaction. Even going to the grocery store provides a satisfying sense of getting something done. It involves Susan and I planning our meals for the week, making a list, going shopping, and putting things away. All of that might take just a couple hours, but it wears me out and leaves me feeling I did do something worthwhile. Me and my old friends joke about how doing one thing like going to the grocery store makes us feel like we’ve gotten something done for the day. And the common joke is, “How did we ever have time for a job?”

If I look at my ToDoist app on my phone, I see a list of things to do that will make me feel good when I get to remove them from my To Do list. And most of those little goals are rather mundane: clean out the file drawers, find a new dermatologist, hire an electrician to install the new Blink security camera and light, cull out DVDs I’ll never watch again, get my eyes checked, and so on.

This is a long way from becoming an astronaut. We never hear people ask: “What do you want to do when you get old?” Theoretically, my retirement years could be longer than my work years. At one time I had big ambitions about what I would do with them, but like a kid growing up and discovering the reality of the work years, the reality of the retirement years is very different too.

A lot of what you can accomplish in retirement depends on money and health, and health really becomes the defining factor. I no longer have a bucket list of things I want to do because at some point the scope of life changes. My sister Becky once told me, “You start out life by living mostly in one room with someone changing your diaper and end up living mostly in one room with someone changing your diaper.” At the time that was funny, scary, and depressing. But as you get older, it becomes, “I can see that.”

I could still have a decade or two, or even three. That’s a lot of time. Unfortunately, it’s time when I’ll have dwindling energy and health. But I don’t think I’ll lose a sense of wanting to accomplish things.

I’m reminded of a short story by R. A. Lafferty called “Nine Hundred Grandmothers.” In it, a space explorer visits another planet and learns the beings there are immortal. However, they get smaller and smaller as they age. He is taken to a cave where the ancestors live on shelves in the wall. The further back he goes the tinier they get. That’s what life is like getting older. The scope of every day slowly gets smaller and smaller. You live with it.

Right now I measure accomplishments by how many books I read or essays I write. I like waking up in the morning and thinking of a goal and then achieving it during the course of the day. At 5:55am this morning I imagine writing this essay. It’s now 7:53am and I’ve almost got a first draft. I hope to finish it soon and eat breakfast. It’s great to start the day having completed a goal early.

Before I got up I also pictured cleaning up the house so our friend Leigh Ann could come over and Susan, Leigh Ann and I can spend the afternoon playing Rummikub. It’s not much of a goal, but it is satisfying.

And I look forward to tonight when Suan and I will watch another episode of Call the Midwife and A Place to Call Home. This might be silly, but I find watching complete series from pilot to finale gives me a sense of accomplishment. So each night I feel like we’ve done something by watching another episode from those two series.

Sometimes I even give myself big goals, ones that are daunting to me now. Ones that I have to push myself to finish. Like cleaning out and organizing my email and computer files on my hard drive. You might laugh, but I have thousands of emails and tens of thousands of computer files waiting to be examined.

Finally, there’s a weird symmetry to getting old. Susan and I have collected a lot of stuff in 45 years of marriage, and now we’re getting rid of all that stuff a little bit at a time. I have thousands of books that I still haven’t read. Ones I bought thinking that one day I’ll get to read. Well, that one day is here and I’ve got to get busy reading them. Finishing each one gives me a sense of accomplishment.

JWH (another thing done – 8:35am)