I'll Figure It Out When I Get There

🟢 She told me something important about retiring: “I know I would miss purpose.”

I recently spoke with a colleague who is a few years away from retirement.

Financially, she’s in a good place. She and her husband have had the conversations, built the models, and made the decisions that many people avoid for years. In many ways, she has done everything right.

And yet, when I asked her what she would miss most, her answer came quickly.

Purpose. Not the paycheck. Not the title. Not even the routine.

Purpose.

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🧭 What most people prepare for… and what they don’t

What struck me in our conversation is how much attention we give to the financial side of retirement, and how little we give to everything else.

She described how freeing it felt once the financial uncertainty lifted. When you know you’ll be okay, it opens up a different kind of thinking. You can start asking better questions. Where do we want to live? How do we want to spend our time? What actually matters now?

But even with that clarity, something deeper remained unresolved.

She said: “I’ve always had something alongside my work that gave me purpose — volunteering, being on boards, contributing in some way. I know I’ll need that.”

That awareness is powerful. Because many people don’t realize it until it’s gone.

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🌱 The identity we don’t question

Later in our conversation, I asked her how much of her identity was tied to her work.

She paused, thought about it, and said: “Probably 80-something percent.”

It’s not surprising when you think about it. For decades, work shapes how we spend our time, how we introduce ourselves, how we measure progress, and how we feel valued. It becomes one of the primary ways we understand who we are.

And then one day, it’s no longer there.

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💡 Purpose isn’t out there. It’s already in you.

I recently heard speaker Corliss Rassyle offer a reframe that resonated. She rejected the idea that purpose is something external… something you have to go out and discover, like a treasure waiting to be found in the distance.

She said purpose is already inside us.

I’d add this: for many people, it isn’t lost. It’s buried. Covered over by decades of obligation — work done for companies, for teams, for children, for aging parents, for communities. All of it meaningful. All of it real. And all of it, quietly, on top of (or mixed in with) the question of what we ourselves actually want, what gives us joy and energy.

Retirement, at its best, isn’t the end of purpose. It’s the first real opportunity many of us have had to excavate it.

To uncover something that was always there.

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✍️ A question for you:

Underneath the decades of doing things for others — what has always been true about you?