What is better – having a job or being retired? Let’s think this through.

I’ll apologize in advance for what is a pretty esoteric answer.

I suggest that neither is a good option.

Job

What is a “job?” Some have defined it as “jackass of the boss”, a rather brash definition but, unfortunately, one that applies for many.

A job is a relatable term for most as it’s what we do every day to produce income, the fuel that keeps us on the daily racecourse. The dictionary defines job as “a lump, chore or duty.”

For some, that lump is a “lump of coal.”

Jobs became the thing with the industrial revolution as industry carved things up into chores or duties all focused collectively on enabling the achievement of the company goals.

Fundamentally, we began to sell our time to build someone else’s dream.

Consider that the average job is around 3.2 years and that during the average lifespan, most of us will have had a dozen or more “jobs.”

Career

With a step up the work chain, we find “career” which is a word, interestingly, that has its origin in the Latin word “carrus” or “wheeled vehicle” denoting a “cart” and then later from the French word “carrier” denoting a road or racecourse.

The dictionary defines career, as a verb, to mean “move swiftly and in an uncontrolled way in a specified direction.”

Careers for many are just that – a mad rush for a long time that ends up going nowhere with that disappointment coming late in life. Or maybe it’s going somewhere in terms of provision and accumulation, but not in a way that fits the definition of a “calling”.

The checkered flag at the end of this racecourse is that coveted pot of gold called retirement, a finish line the desire for which may have impeded the pursuit of a true calling.

Vocation

Which leads, then, to the concept of vocation. Vocation is rooted in the Latin vocāre, meaning to call, which suggests listening for something that calls out to you, a voice telling you what you are.

Today, we’ve convoluted the true meaning of the word and relate vocation to specialized training into a “career track” or a “job” via a vocational or trade school. Not likely the pursuit of a “higher calling” but more a decision based on need and what may be trending in the “job” market.

GRAMMARIST | English grammar, usage, and style blog defines a vocation as:

“a calling, an occupation, or a large undertaking for which one is especially suited. It can be roughly synonymous with career or profession, though vocation connotes a seriousness or a commitment that these words don’t always bear.”

Currently, we tend to mix vocation in with two other words – career and job – when their distinctions are quite different.

I’m basing this strange answer on a simple observation – one that I made about four decades ago that still holds true.

Highly successful people, world changers, and deep influencers don’t have jobs or careers and they don’t retire.

They have a vocation. They have discovered and are answering a calling. They are honoring their “uniqueability.” They don’t leave the creative process. They tend to “work themselves to death.”

And-

-they live longer than most.

Work – another bad four-letter word.

Retirement is based on a French verb meaning “retreat, go backward.”

We’ve bought into this unnatural, longevity-sapping act which has created an either/or mindset. Work is something to get away from. We either work or we retire – not both.

The possibility of avoiding a “lump of coal” or job and pursuing a life of leisure has a much stronger appeal than considering the possibility of a lifetime of answering a calling and pursuing it to the end.

We all have a “vocation” in us. But it gets covered over, pushed back as we pursue the 20th-century linear life model of learn-earn-relax/retire-die.

Within that model, we will pursue that paycheck at the expense of our calling to achieve an act that has been shown to shorten our lives and create a drain on our society.

We’re waking up.

The no-work, leisure-based retirement model is dying, none too soon. The emerging model rejects either/or and thinks both/and with the emergence of a lifestyle model built around “semi-retirement for a lifetime.”

It’s built around the simple discovery that busting your hump for 40+ years to accumulate enough to do nothing for another 20 years is a failed model. It is nearly impossible to accumulate enough savings over a 40-year work life to support a totally no-work lifestyle for another 20–30 years.

Millennials, GenXers, and even Boomers, are adopting a semi-retired lifestyle built around work following their calling and designed to support a balance of work, leisure, and learning for a lifetime.