Observing Retirement Rhythms
A Springtime Report about Wintertime Patterns
Riding a bicycle: Initial Observations about Not Falling
Riding a bicycle is the focus of one of the delightful philosophical reflections of Michael Polanyi’s perceptive little book The Tacit Dimension (1966, 1967), and the longer quite profound volume on Personal Knowledge, both of which I have read (and portions of which I have now re-read) to my great benefit.
Quote of the Month
Our body is the ultimate instrument of all our external knowledge, whether intellectual or practical. In all our waking moments, we are relying on awareness of contacts of things with our body with things outside for attending to these things. Our own body is the only thing in the world which we normally never experience as an object, but experience always in terms of the world to which we are attending from our body. It is by making this intelligent use of our body that we feel it to be our body and not a thing outside.” (Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension)
In his book Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (1958, 1962), Polanyi famously objected to “thoughtless reductionisms” — of objectivism and subjectivism — in the face of which he reminded readers that we live in reality “as the garment of our own skin.” (64) Where we pay attention to the tacit dimension of self-knowledge, Polany thought 20th century human beings could avoid self-destruction, but “only by a conscious reaffirmation of traditional continuity.” (The Tacit Dimension, 63)
Re-reading Polanyi for the first time in 40-plus years has reminded me of some of the reasons why I have learned to think about human “progress” in the context of traditions of authority, and why I have been hesitant to align myself with radical progressivism, especially where they display anti-institutional patterns of thought.
Let’s begin with what it means for human phenomena to be observed.
MICHAEL’S VOCABULARY WORD OF THE MONTH
Observed
British English. /əbˈzəːvd/ uhb-ZURVD U.S. English. /əbˈzərvd/. uhb-ZURVD
I love the fact that there is a lingering difference in the pronunciation of the adjective and noun forms of “observed”
There are three meanings listed in OED's entry for the word observed, one of which is labelled obsolete. (See ‘Meaning & use’ for definitions, usage, and quotation evidence)
“to come to realize or know especially through consideration of noted facts”
Originally published as part of the entry for observe, v.
I think it is this latter sense that C. S. Lewis was intending when he chose to entitle his memoir of reflections A Grief Observed. He made no attempt to dis-acknowledge the grief he experienced. I had forgotten — if I ever actually knew — that the eloquent and quite erudite Oxford don initially chose to publish his reflections via a pseudonym “N. W. Clerk” (an apt mask of identity, I think. A “clerk” job is to keep records, copies text, and pays attention to documents.) I understand, however, that CSL’s reticence was pragmatic; he simply did not want to personal connection to be so prominent that his observations about the experience would get lost. All of that makes good sense to me, but I also understand why it is that some usages are considered archaic, and we may be in the midst of losing this sense of the word “observed” in the 21st century. I dunno.
Dictionaries like the OED also record changes in word usage. So if you should go to the OED page for the word “observed” you can now find that the adjectival and nominative uses of the word were modified in 2004 and July 2023. Good indicators that linguistic developments in usage can never be frozen in time, but we also know that they can be . . . observed. :-)
Observing Michael’s Rhythms in Retirement
I like the way the Oxford English Dictionary exhibits the work the word does in our English language. One can observe different aspects of experience. You can examine cycles and seasons of different duration (days, weeks, months, etc.). In this case, I am thinking of the past two years since my retirement, but I am also taking the measure of the period since I met my wife and friend.
Due to the fact that I have several life-long habits, I anticipated continuity in retirement. I knew enough about myself to know that I would continue to write, to read, and to think from day to day. Indeed, I would be disappointed to discover that these would no longer be possible for me. I also knew that I would continue to approach my days with an agenda - or “to do list.” Long ago, friends who lived with me dubbed me “Mr. Intensity” in recognition of my driven personality. I have always had an agenda. So to know me has been to know the ways I push myself (and others).
Over the past two years, when I have been asked about how I am doing in retirement, I have told those people (who actually wanted to hear more than a one-word response) that I thought I was incorporating some enjoyable rhythms and that I was not as driven by my to do list as I have been in the past. It is possible, I think, to find yourself inhabiting a rhythm without actually having intended it from the outset. On the other hand, a 67-year old man known in his early twenties as “Mr. Intensity” would like probably notice if his forward movement began to be punctuality by different speeds.
Let’s begin with the most obvious fact. I continue to “live in my head” more so than in my body. My responses to those who ask me about how I experience retirement is more cerebral than most people, in part due to the fact that I read a lot, and think about my life and experience in relation to what I read. And in addition to writing essays that are inspired by Michel de Montaigne’s experiments in thought (such as his inquiry “How do I know that my cat is not playing with me?), I have written more than a hundred texts that I think of as “institutional essays” about what it means to be a university in the 21st century.
Weekly Rhythms of Reading Scripture Together and Worship — The conversations that Cindy and Andrew and Mary and I have, mediated by the collection of prayers found in the Episcopal Church’s Book of Common Prayer, . .. This is probably the first rhythm that I noticed as shifting. I began to eagerly anticipate from week to week. I also began to anticipate participating in worship in ways that I had not done so over the past four decades. As I took my turn serving as liturgist, I found myself experiencing a newfound sense of joy — “I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of tne Lord.” I note that in this instance, I have entered a liturgical rhythm that existed long before me. A couple of elderly men — Lloyd Horton and Eulos Love and others at Viola Baptist Church in the Arkansas foothills — made the words of the psalmists their own just as thousands — indeed millions —of Christians and Jews have spoken year in and year out across the centuries.
Breakfast with the guys every two weeks — I am fortunate to be the recipient of hospitality here in Columbus with some folks most of whom are in their 70s. One of the fellows at the church we attend invited me to join them for breakfast at Bob Evans restaurant. Their pattern of gathering twice a month of Wednesday mornings fits my onw desire. Because I don’t get out that much, it is good for me to break my quasi-monastic habits — spending much of my time in reading, writing and seeking opportunities for study — to enjoy time of fellowship with folks who have other interests. Except for Dave Fisher, who was an accountant by profession almost all of these guys spent their working life working as engineers, chemists, and Cummins employees. Dave teased me about whether I might be tempted to call this gathering “Breakfast with the Geezers.” I admitted that the thought had occurred to me, but that honesty required that if I was going to use that word, then I would have to apply it to myself. And I am not reading ot do that at this point. Mary and I refer to ourselves as members of “the newly old.”
Rhythms of the Morning as well as Observing Marks of Mourning. My habits of reading are lifelong. I no longer read a paper product when I ingest the news, but I do continue to read the morning newspapers (Indianapolis Star and NYT) and scan the evening paper for Columbus), and I also know that I observe grief in myself and others. Not infrequently, my remembrance of those who have died is occasioned by reading the obituaries in one of the newspapers I read each day.
I am not sure what it would mean, for me or for others, not to acknowledge loss, not to feel anger. We felt the death of our friend Copeland in January 2023 and later that year the death of Nancy Huffman, I wrote a longish eulogy prompted in part by the conflicted circumstance of her death in the absence of a fully articulated statement of faith. this past year, I had the privilege of giving the eulogy for my Aunt Jennie Lynn Sullivan in May-June 2024). I do think about the deaths of those people I know. I also continue to feel grief for particular people — my father Billy Cartwright who died in 1998; Mary’s mother Imo Jean Wilder, who died while living with us a decade ago; the death of Travis Jeffords (October 2024), the deaths of Richard Hays and Russell Richey (January 2025), etc. In some of these cases, I have not shared my written reflections. In other cases, I deliberately have done so (see November 2023) with a strong sense that not to do so would be to fail to grieve. Like CSL, I do not pretend to fathom either the dense depths or strange shallows of my grief, but I am able to apprehend that often I am swimming in sorrow. And then, like many many people across the world, I also grieve at the chaos and disruptions that assail citizens of the USA in 2025.
Walking and Riding a bicycle — One of the things Mary and I liked about the city of Columbus was the that fact that it was a “walkable” community. Plenty of “people trails” that could be used for bicycle riding and streets in the Historic Downtown that were good for walking. At this point, I do not think I can clima that there is any actual rhythm in either walking or riding. As I anticipate the future, I know that I must do a better job of getting exercise.
Riding our bicycles (er, rather “E-Bikes”) is also one of the practices that Mary and Michael Cartwright have attempted to incorporate in our retirement rhythms. Thus far, Mary has been more successful in that particular objective, but without engaging in the most obvious kind of self-deception, I can say that I am learning to enjoy riding the bicycle again (especially the e-bike) as witness the rides we took on Martha’s Vineyard and Cape Cod earlier this fall while vacationing with Mary’s sister Betsy and her husband Phil.
If you look down at what your feet are doing, while riding a bicycle, you will likely fumble and potentially wreck. It is possible, however, to observe what you are doing without looking directly. I would like to think that this post is more tacit than the product of a direct gaze, but then I know well that my gait — in walking — is not as steady as it once was. I am doing better —I think. So does my physical therapist and my podiatrist and my personal physician (an internist), all of whom are charged with the responsibility of reporting to the powers that be about my use of Medicare insurance to help me learn to walk in a more balanced way.
Learning to Walk with Greater Balance: Since my injury four years ago (broken ankle —triply) and the subsequent surgery and recovery, I have intermittently struggled with walking. This pas fall, I fell twice — both odd and disconcerting, and yet seemingly unrelated. For a few months, I was experiencing a lot of pain in my ankles, after only moderate exercise. Worried that it might be due to neurological issues, I consulted my physicians beginning with the orthopedist who performed the surgery. He examined me and reported that whatever the problem was — in addition to already existing evidence of arthritis —it did not apply to his skillset. He thought “it could be neurological.” My neurologist was puzzled. She had noticed “a slight problem in my gait” back in the fall of 2023 and made a note of it, but she could not pinpoint a cause for the pain and sleep disruption. She recommended that I see a podiatrist. I managed to get an appointment made in late November. Dr. Scott Benjamin may get the award for the most physical examination of a portion of my body that I have ever had. He was also puzzled about what was going on. The tendons appeared to be functional — although they were stiff. The MRI test did not reveal any significant calcium deposits. I had to laugh when he pulled out a tape measurer for the purpose of measuring my legs. But that proved to be the basis for the discovery that unlocked the puzzle.
Turns out that my left leg is a full 3/4” shorter than my right leg. He isn’t sure how this came about, but then I have had a couple of different injuries to my ankles over the years. While there is no obvious causal link to my ankle surgery in Feb. 2021 and subsequent recovery, the insertion of hardware (screws and plates) in my ankle are likely factors. The net effect has been to put undue stress on my right hip. The course of physical therapy that I had during the months of January and the first half of February helped me learn to walk in a more balance way that takes into account the changes in my body. I would prefer, of course, not to have to be self-conscious about the way I walk, but I had already made some adjustments out of simple fear (that I might fall down the stairs) and justifiable prudence. It remains to be seen what other kinds of adjustments I must make.
So I have started to experience the rhythms of walking — “in the garment of my skin” — both with greater awareness of the limits of my body and yet also aware that it remains possible that still may do things like walk longer distances. The human body is an amazing organism — yes! — and my own human body is a stranger source of wonder to me!
What it means to walk as a person with one leg shorter than the other entails, at the very least, that I have to adjust in various ways. I have practiced walking with weights. I have done exercises on plastic platforms to build up strength in my ankles, etc. So far, these adjustments have included using a “lift” build up the heal of my shoe by 3/8” being more careful to do stretching exercises, anticipating that after an afternoon of working out at the gym (which is still not as frequent as it should be) I will likely have some is comfort, and that even with greater care about the use of my body, I am still likely to experience some stress as my hip and legs and knees and ankle find a kind of stability — hopefully that can be sustained. And we are not even talking about the separate challenge of “developing core strength.”
Not all rhythms result from self-conscious decision making, and some rhythms are not solely personal. There are habits that are interpersonal by their very nature. I take it that this is not simply true of me. In some cases, I have discovered that I have fallen into a habit that I find pleasant and decide to continue doing what I have already started. There aren’t many of these, I concede, but there are some. And I try to take these into account without overthinking the ways I participate in this personal knowledge.
There are rhythms that Mary and I would like to experience together. We haven’t yet found our way into a mid-winter trip. We took some time to go to Spring Mill State Park at the end of February. It certainly was not exactly like our visit to St. Augustine, Florida in 2022 (during her sabbatical) or our trip in 2024 to Puerto Rico, but a respite nonetheless in anticipation of the eventual arrival of the season of spring. In due course, a mid-winter trip may become more of a rhythm that we experience with repetitions of time and or place. I am not worried, and if it doesn’t happen, I probably won’t be bothered.
Even where I am merely a bystander, there are daily rhythms to experience. Mary does some of the New York Times puzzles. I do not. But I am occasionally called upon to serve as a short-term consultant. At times, I have to confirm that the combination of letters that she thinks surely must be a word, is actually not a sequence that works as a part of speech. But even where my judgment confirms the rulings of whatever dictionary may be consulted for Mary’s pursuit of the coveted accolade of “Genius” — the news I bring may not be enjoyed or even trusted by my spouse. Just enough time for Mary to be a genius, and everyone once in a while to achieve the coveted status of “Queen Bee.”
What is Missing? — Retirement Rhythms Observed
Plenty! There are no Lenten intentions or New Year’s resolutions, you may have noticed. This is not an obsessional confessional! Indeed, I am motivated more by continuity than by the illusion that I am going to engage in radical change in the way I am constituted. In that respect I am cautious about presuming that I can or will engage in a “makeover” of my self— yet another indication that I am a bit conservative (in the Burkean sense) — about self-reform. I do not doubt that metanoia is possible, but my guess is that folks around me will continue to need to exercise, forbearance, patience, and fortitude. Bear with me, my friends!
There are no grades, either! Not because I no longer think that way — I certainly still have that capacity. But I am not sure what purpose t would serve to assign myself a B- or a C+ . . . Nor can I roll back the clock and act as if the old-style habit of grading associated with elite institutions the “Gentleman’s C” . . . We live in the world of grade inflation. We think about self-esteem factors. And so if I were to assign myself a grade, I would quickly be assailed by those who would want to make sure that I was not abrogating the preferred style of assessment of learning.I don’t need that. Actually, I already practice a form of appreciative inquiry, and my learning style is oriented toward the identification of those bits of knowledge. Of course, there is also the problem of what constitutes “mid-term” for the retiree. With the exception of those times when I may be enrolled in the Communiversity course at the University of Indianapolis, my semester is now a lifelong journey of learning.
Can I pause my acquisitive habits of lifelong to enjoy the tasty nuggets of text? Yes I can! Indeed, I already do. This past week, I finished reading Ancestors, William Maxwell’s remarkably well-written memoir, which he subtitled “A Family History.” One afternoon,I ran across a subtle sequence of sentences. I went back several times to notice the ways he set it up, both in terms of the sequence of chapters, and he paragraphs of text in that particular chapter. Each time I marveled at the writer’s craft, and I took delight at being one of the people who has had the opportunity to enjoy. The two words that the writer placed in that spot can be enjoyed by a fellow scribe such as myself, or by folks whose approach to reading the family memoir are more specifically genealogical. Regardless, I do not regret the time I spent gazing out the window in silent reverie in the early afternoon. And later, while sipping a nice glass of petite syrah wine, I thumbed back through and read the earlier pages of the chapter.
I also re-read some of Maxwell’s wry observations about small town life, the truth of which strikes me as broader than the community of Lincoln, Illinois, where he grew up and several generations of his family lived before he was born in the early 1900s.
“Small town people manage to endure the inexorable proximity of their lives only by deceiving themselves into thinking that nobody knows what they couldn’t not know.” (Ancestors, 123)
I love the delicious sequence of words — “inexorable proximity” in that quotation! I also like the fact that Maxwell is not defensive about the fact that such knowledge is provisional and transitory. At the end of his memoir, he invokes the image of a kaleidoscope in that “you can keep shifting the essential elements and coming up with new patterns and combination, but it is never-ending. . .” (311).
To say something is never-ending, I think, is to be alert to the prospect of repetitions that may even have a frequency — perhaps rhythms of reverie. I am not sure that I quite believe Maxwell that his construction of his family heritage is merely a “house of cards,” but I admire his ability to stand back from his carefully wrought reconstruction of genealogy in the awareness that he has a quite limited knowledge of the past and that also means that he has limited self-knowledge in the present. Where we are not entirely self-deceived about what we think is going on with us, we confront the fact of the matter: self-knowledge is provisional (at best!) and subject to changes only some of which we control. On the other hand, it is possible to experience delight in knowing oneself well enough to be able to see oneself in the context of rhythms that remain a mystery precisely because we don’t know how to take into account all the ways that we repeat what preceding generations have done.
Living within the limits of what we can know about ourselves is another one of those features of “living in the garments of our skin.” Here and now, as St. Paul wrote to the church at Corinth in the first century, we know in part.
I often chewed on quotable passages (like Maxwell’s family history) before I retired, of course, but I do it now with a sense that anticipates a sense of contentment that some of my friends from across the years doubted might ever come.
Considering this Retiree’s Provisional Reflections
I can imagine that a few readers who have persevered through this most recent monthly reflection of Michael’s Jubilee Reader may have an itching sensation at the back of their minds. But hasn’t Michael engaged in the kind of reflection that Michael Polanyi warns against? Is this not the reflective equivalent of having looked down at one’s feet while writing the bicycle?
No, I don’t think so. (Notice, I haven’t wrecked the bicycle again!) Here’s why. I don’t pretend to stand outside my experience. Nor have I succumbed to the kind of subjectivism that isolates me from the broader set of social patterns in which I continue to exist. Rather, I am reflecting about some of the practices of retirement itself.
And I would have my friends from across the years to know that I am enjoying doing so. I do find myself amusing at times. And at other times, I am baffled at my inability to do something that I want to think that I used to do in a more fluid fashion. Then again, I am grateful when I find my way back to the kind of stability that is made possible when the podiatrist crafts a simple “lift” for my shoe that makes it possible for me to walk with 3/8 elevation of my left leg so that I can avoid doing hardm to my hip as a result of having walked for several years by overcompensating with my right hip. The human body — my own hardy but fragile earthen vessel — is a fascinating organism. You and I are fascinating creatures.
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The door has not been closed on other modes of self-knowledge.
That is an observation that is worth sitting with in the days to come.
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I could go on a diet, for example, but have been honest with myself that I am not prepared to engage in the kind of wholesale changes in habits that would be required to lose significant weight. I don’t like the idea that my body mass index is now slightly above 33%. I also know that there was a time when my BMI was abnormally low (while taking a Handball course at Hendrix College in 1976, I was measured as having a 3% BMI). So I have sometimes joked with people about the shift in the amount of body fat, but to take it seriously will surely mean that I must establish rhythms of exercise that will result in wholesale change in who I am. That particular observation is no exaggeration. It is simply the truth!
Finally, I am grateful to have arrived at a place in the retirement experience where I feel settled enough to be able to feel that I have hit my stride. That I have done so does not mean that I will be able to maintain it. Indeed, I will likely find that other rhythms … and other dimensions of human experience supersede. All the more reason why I can give thanks for the time, and not worry unduly about what lies ahead. “Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof” (Matthew 6:34) is one observation about life’s experience. “This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it” (Psalm 118:24) is another. Both, I think, are to be observed — as I am able to do so — and in both cases, I know I am not alone in doing so. Indeed, such explorations are part of the heritage that makes us who we are.
Michael G. Cartwright, March 21, 2025
And now for the footnotes at the end.
Maxwell, William. Ancestors: A Family History (Vintage, 1971).
Polanyi, Michael. Personal Knowledge (Univ. of Chicago, 1957).
__________. The Tacit Dimension (Anchor Books, 1967)
One of the delights of my seminary education was the semester I spent in the early 1980s working my way through the book Personal Knowledge, under the tutelage of that master teacher, William Poteat in the Department of Religion at Duke University. I audited the course, but the conversations with Poteat were so compelling I always came to class prepare to discuss what we were reading. Later, I participated in Poeteat’s course where he read Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. What a privilege to have learned with him.