Yesterday, at my place of employment, I drove for the last time this year. Last week I informed the lady whom I'm driving for that I would do it one more calendar year. It has proven to be good part-time employment for me, but like every other period of my life that has ended, this needs to end, too. I plan to enter a stage of life called full retirement where I carry along all the baggage, mental and physical, I've accumulated plus all the future plans and dreams I hold.
When I was earning my college degree with the English major, I had to memorize a poem in one of those classes that came to mind when I started writing this: Shakespeare's All the World's a Stage. It never meant much to me at the time, but now it's taken on a great deal of meaning.
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like a snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
