If Engineer Jim retires from operating a locomotive can he still live that lifestyle by dressing in overalls and a striped Engineer cap and operating his HO gauge electric train? Can Hobo John retired from hopping boxcars and living in the hobo jungle still live that lifestyle in the nursing home by walking around the yard with a handkerchief filled with lunchroom leftovers tied on a stick and held over his shoulder? Can a retired Hells Angel live that biker lifestyle by donning a hot rag, leathers, biker boots, sitting on a kids plastic Harley in his apartment, and saying varoom varoom? Can a retired Chef live his past lifestyle by wearing his white apron and tall chef's hat as he answeres the door of assisted living to get his cafeteria prepared meal? Can a rancher still live the ranch lifestyle in town in a senior's community by wearing a western hat and boots and yelling "Get along little dogies," at the stray dogs pooping on the lawn of the grounds? Can a retired mechanic live that lifestyle in his apartment by wearing a grease-stained blue overall jumpsuit with his name on it above his failing heart while blowing the dust off his old model cars? Can a retired policeman live that lifestyle by dressing in blue, penning on a badge he bought on eBay, and making siren sounds with a megaphone? My opinion is a lifestyle is the way one is living at the present. This doesn't mean one cannot identify with their past lifestyle and still be of the same heart. Advanced years force most of us to make lifestyle changes. A few very fortunate people get to live their lifestyle until they die. Many in our Congress and Senate are a good example of that.
Very interesting thread, Faye. Definitely giving some thought about it and will get back to the thread with my thoughts.
@Cody Fousnaugh I am really looking forward to it and appreciate your point of view. Please don't ever take my mountain cowgirl campfire cookout humor personally.
A lot of us tend to identify ourselves by what we do for a living. I have done a lot of very different things for a living but I didn't identify with all of them, just those that I considered doing for the rest of my working life, but not the stuff that I just did to pay the rent or the mortgage. I did relate to being a paperworker and union representative during the time that I did that for a living, and I identified with the whole community that surrounds paramedics, I suppose particularly because I worked pretty much every segment of EMS, from a volunteer EMT to training officer at a large private ambulance company, EMS director, instructor, coordinator, and program chairman of the EMT department at a college, skills examiner for the state, and owner of an ambulance company. I still identify with that community, I suppose, in that I participate in a couple of EMS groups, one for the Rio Grande Valley EMS, where I worked, and another for retired EMTs and paramedics. In fact, if I turn around in my chair, I can see my EMT holster, and there are other EMS stuff in sight within my office, yet it's been 21 years since I've been in EMS. I also identified closely as a Sysop when I ran a BBS, but no one remembers Bulletin Board Systems anymore so it's kind of hard to keep that one at the forefront.
When I worked for nearly 30 years in a professional career, that was a big part of my "identity." When I retired, I happily left that crap in the dust.
I grew up working in the oil patch, pulling rods and tubing, roustabouting, pulling casing, fracking and cementing.. If you're unformiliar with these terms, the equivilent might be a grunt, a private in army infantry, doing all the dirty work. I worked for a class A electrical utility, Texas Electric Service Co, now bought out several times and now part of the Texas Electric System. I was a buyer then purchasing manager manager for a forture 500 company which was bought out by a British firm and no longer exixt as it was. I was a sales rep, and sales manager., The one I identify with most is selling industrial fasteners to the farm and ranch industry, the oil and gas industry, to the manufacteing industries. I had a large territory, from western Kansas to through eastern New Mexico down to San Angelo up to Abilene, Wichita Falls, back to Lubbock. After building up the territory north of Amarillo and south of Big Springs and east of Lubbock, I managed a group,of sales reps over that same area. I dentify more with selling. and some with the buying end.
Can a married pair of Fed. bureaucrats who sat on their asses 30 years shuffling papers before taking early retirement in their early 50s continue being sedentary? Hell yeah.
Well, I knew, in the beginning, after getting my Honorable Discharge from the Navy and working at an amusement park for awhile, being an EMT was cool. The training was good, but the hours, sleeping at the office and working almost every weekend got old. I I got tired of people refusing to pull over to the side of the road/highway when I had my siren/emergency lights on. Then, I got OJT for Shipping/Receiving/Warehouse/Stockroom in manufacturing. Weekly pay as well as holiday pay, sick pay and weekends off. I loved it when I got hired by an electronics company and learned a whole lot about electronic parts being a Stockroom Supervisor. Then, I got seriously interested in Purchasing/Inventory Management. Started using my first on-the-job computer in 1989. Had already been using a computer to do my resume, in a library. After getting my own office/computer/phone and filing cabinet, I totally knew I was in "seventh heaven"! And, my salary took a nice hike up. Professional rodeo was never in my mind as a "career", but only as a weekend hobby.........but, I sure loved the attention it brought me in the arena. Finding a good "rope" horse was/wasn't easy, but got one. Money on tack, ropes/gloves, Roping School and yearly Membership fee to rodeo took me away from nice dinners out, but..........that's the way it was.
I am sure the chef, mechanic etc etc can look back at their glorious days of being what they once were donning their uniforms. In their retirement, maybe a bit slower than what they were in their younger days, they could still relate and would not want to shut off their past completely. They would still like to cook, be their own mechanic or hand down knowledge to the younger ones. All this is wonderful because they are honorably carrying out certain aspects of their past. However, what about the policeman, the general in the army, or the teacher. How do these people relate behaviourally in their present retirement situation. IMO, those behaviors and uniforms shd be tucked away since it may cause a few ruffles among people in their circles who are not used to taking direction.
People Are chameleons they can adapt 2 any lifestyle changes. They will use any prior experiences when necessary for the current lifestyle. If you miss a prior lifestyle you still have the memories of it relive it in your mind, lifestyle Revisited can be exciting for the moment then it's been there done that. We are built to move on to new adventure no matter how small.
I went from the DC area where the first question you asked when meeting someone new was "Where do you work/what do you do?" to this rural community where I've known people for months and realized I have no idea where they work. There's a big part of this nation (and world) where people do not identify with what they do for a living. I've tried not to. I never wanted to delegate my identity to some corporation so I cease to exist in my own life during the next round of layoffs.
This is an interesting thought. I wonder how much one's culture (national, regional, ethnic) plays into it. Is being a chameleon (to whatever degree) an innate survival thing that we all have and are then given varying degrees of permission to act on, or is it a learned skill? Off the top of my head, I think of capitalism being referred to as "creative destruction." New industries arise, others die (for example, the automotive industry created new opportunities while reducing demand for all things equestrian.) We adapt. We change. We never lose what we have become so far, we merely build on it, sometimes in dramatic ways. And "Americanism" has been described as "reinventing ones self." This is (or once was) pretty unique in the world. Our opportunities are "contra-caste." Are those who are in cultures such as ours denied the stability that a static system provides (assuming such a system is sustainable)? Or are they given all the personal and professional growth they care to engage in? And what about those elsewhere who are born into professions or positions with no way to leverage their other skills or personality, or those who re born into "managed economies"? There's some amount of loss and some amount of gain involved in both.
My former Life Style as a Sales Manager for Financial services was as Mr. Jekyll and now at age 86 my Life Style is as Mr. Hyde and one has nothing to do with the other.
In my opinion change is inevitable, 4 most species on this planet. Does our DNA change? I don't know the answer to this just a thought that comes to mind. If DNA does not change then what changes in us to make us adapt. We continually adjust to small changes. We can move from a cold climate so hot climate and our bodies adjust, astronauts in space their bodies adjust, not always for the better but they change. Recently saw a show that claimed the astronauts internal timing (clock) mechanism while in space changed from normal 24 hours a day to whatever the orbits time was. This subject has more questions than answers even scientists are amazed how microorganisms can survive under the worst conditions how did they adapt?