Cristiano Ronaldo. Harry Kane. Jurgen Klopp. Joe Biden. Angela Carini. Benedict XVI. John Paul II. At first glance a fairly disparate list of people. What is common to them is that at some point they all faced or are facing calls to step away from what they are famous for.
When does a football player realise he is now a liability to the team he plays in? When does a coach realise the team is now shackled rather than freed with his methods? Finding the right time to retire, to move away from something we love doing is always hard. When Biden finally listened to the clamour to make way in the current US presidential race, he was acknowledging the obvious.
When Benedict XVI announced to a stunned world his decision to resign the papacy in 2013, he bucked a trend in the Catholic Church which had persisted for centuries. History will be ever so much kinder to him for this one ultimate gesture of maturity. At the same time, we revered St Pope John Paul II for doggedly staying the course, for showing leadership through the ravages of sickness and the vulnerability of old age.
How many stories have we heard of sportsmen who have retired, only to return for one more season, one more fight, one more race, one more shot at glory, (and one more chance to reap financial rewards), only for it to end with a whimper? Even in the Church we have multiple stories of priests and founders with egos so large that they continue to occupy roles beyond their due time, thus tainting rather than burnishing their own legacy.
In the convent where I live with a number of older priests, the standard joke is that as priests we preach incessantly about being ready to embrace eternal life, but when we think of our own time to die, our prayer invariably sounds something like: “Lord, I am ready, but please Lord, do take your time!”
As long as we produce, do something, have a role, we feel we are visible. We matter.
What is the root of this reluctance? I suggest that this is rooted in the fear of oblivion. The terror that once we stop or die, we will ultimately be forgotten. As long as we produce, do something, have a role, we feel we are visible. We matter. The moment we are faced with our own helplessness and uselessness, we believe what society says to us: that we are expendable, lost flotsam in the stream of history.
The anxiety brought about by processes such as the empty nest at home, retirement, or resigning from positions we held dear, is fed by this fear.
Some sociologists who have studied secularisation, with its doing away completely with the need for an afterlife, noted that since everything now has been shoved onto this side of eternity, our bucket lists have become longer, and more urgent. The whole hospitality industry feeds on this need to make hay while the sun shines, now.
The player who knows when to hang his boots, the boxer who stops a fight knowing it is no longer safe for her, the founder who knows when to pass on the baton to his/her community, the priest who knows when to slow down – these encapsulate one of the hardest claims in the gospels: “We are unworthy servants, we have merely done what was our duty to do.” Luke 17:10