I spent a good chunk of my life learning to be reasonable. In
business, the mantra for any proposal was always: “Is it practical?” It
seemed to me that reasonableness (and its sister practicality) were
virtues. People who were unreasonable or impractical seemed to be
exceptions—they came across as flaky, dangerous, occasionally lucky,
unpredictable, disconnected, loose canons and, above all, they weren’t
team players. When I turned 50, I came upon a quotation by George
Bernard Shaw that hit me between the eyes and totally changed my
approach to life and, in particular, my future.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions
that surround him …. The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions
to himself …. All progress depends on the unreasonable man.

It
was always obvious to me that the key to anything is action and that
action is mostly a function of commitment. Until I got this quotation,
however, it never occurred to me that I could choose to commit to
something that was either reasonable or unreasonable, either practical
or impractical. Only committing to what is reasonable, practical or
feasible means that, by definition, I am committing to more of the
same. What is reasonable is a product of social convention and
historical experience—it defines the proverbial ‘box’ and, moreover,
any breakthrough I could think of, whether personal or collective, only
happened when someone committed to something that was unreasonable.

There’s a long philosophical and historical reason for this kind of
‘reasonableness’ thinking. But at the end of the day it keeps us locked
in a ‘control and predict’ frame of reference that blinds us to any
other possibilities. Being reasonable traps us in a feedback loop:
making our future life look reasonable (like our past) means we must
keep trying to predict the future so we can control outcomes… so that
we end up with more of what we have already had. An exercise in
futility if ever there was…life goes on regardless of our efforts to
control it.

When it comes to post-retirement planning and thinking, most of us
gravitate towards a very reasonable approach. Whether we are talking
with our peers or service providers about new careers, leisure,
relationships or creative expression, we get the same kind of
analytical counseling that we got in our corporate or organizational
life…a series of questions that focuses on what we are good at, what
we like, what we need, and on and on. The product of this kind of
thinking is rational, safe, more or less predictable, and, above all,
reasonable decisions that will guarantee our retirement will look very
similar to our past.

I propose that anyone contemplating the future after retirement (or
anytime really) should start from the position of “If anything were
possible” and then ask themselves the following questions:

• Since the future is up to each of us as a function of our
  commitments and actions, are my commitments going to define the
  circumstances in my life or is my reasonable interpretation of what is
  and isn’t possible going to determine my commitments?

• If I could BE any way I wished in the future, who would I BE?

• What would I have accomplished?

• What is my vision for the rest of my life?

• Is it possible to have the second half of my life be richer,
  happier, healthier, more loving and more creative than any other period
  of my life?

• Can I be more valued and make a bigger contribution than I have ever imagined?

And so it goes. It is unreasonable perhaps, but I would rather live
the rest of my life in an attempt to fulfill or manifest an
unreasonable vision and fail, than spend the next 30 years maintaining
and replaying the same reasonable, practical and self-limiting
conversations that I have had in the past. These weren’t wrong at the
time and they aren’t wrong now. Their rightness/wrongness isn’t the
issue. The issue is who am I now and who will I be in the coming years.