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Thought for the Day: Wrapping Up 50 Years in the Workplace and Starting a New Career

A couple of weeks before my retirement, I mentioned it to R' Fuerst; who responded, "Are you making a siyum?" Baruch HaShem I was and I have. I made a siyum on seder Nezikin -- gemara, not just mishnayos. It has been in the works for years and just happened to coincide with my retirement, which just happened to coincide with Erev Pesach. I also put a good friend of mine -- who is famous for his gematrias -- on the spot by asking him the night before the siyum for a good gematria. I said, "no pressure, but if you have something off hand, that would be great." He didn't. No worries. Then the next morning before davening (I typically do my siyumim on Shabbos after davening at the vasikin minyan), though, he pulled me aside to tell me he had stayed up later to find a gematria for me. So nice... and now I needed to rework my speech. Oh well, I had about two hours...

The gematria for 50 is הקל טוב (with an 'א', of course)/The G-d of Good (more or less). Here is what I said (more or less).

I am very fortunate to be able to retire. Some people at work told me that I deserve it. I don't know about deserve. HaShem gives us so from the day we are born, it is hard for me to say that I deserve anything. One colleague, though, said that I was so lucky. I replied, "I don't know about lucky. I have been working for 50 years, after all." Her eyes kind of glazed over; she is not yet 50 and the idea of having worked longer than she has been alive just sort of put her brain in overload.

Honestly, though, I was thinking only of the physical/financial aspect. Yes, I can now afford to retire, but work still seemed like a necessary evil. Then I received that gematria,  הקל טוב. Maybe it was more than just a necessary evil?

I recently heard a nice vort from R' Biderman, shlit''a. A young man had said that he just didn't have time to learn; he was so busy! R' Biderman said that time is like a suitcase. If you just throw things in, you have a nice full suitcase with a jumble of stuff. But if you carefully organize your stuff -- the socks folded here, the shirts here, the personal items here; you end up having room for a lot more stuff.

I have always tried to be efficient with my time. To school was added work, then I got married and started graduate school (still working), then starting a family (still working), then new jobs, then becoming frum and needing to find time for davening and learning. I've learned to be very efficient with what I can pack into the time I have available each day.

Students taking physics will often complain that they understand the material, but they can't do the problems. My response has always been, "That means you don't understand the material." (I am not everyone's favorite teacher.) Knowing you have to be efficient with time is one thing, actually practicing it and honing those skills for 50 years is another thing altogether. My working years, therefore, were not "a necessary evil", but a tremendous hand-on school in using time effectively -- הקל טוב indeed!

Retirement means that HaShem has removed a bunch of stuff from my daily suitcase of time and I now have the skills to fill that time efficiently and productively. Baruch HaShem.

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