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When the Music Changes
Yesterday was Labor Day, the final day of a three-day weekend. It got me thinking about how our lives take on different rhythms at different times. Labor Day marks the unofficial end of summer. For many families, it also means getting children back into school routines and settling once again into the familiar rhythm of weekdays, weekends, and school holidays.
The patterns that fill our weeks do more than keep us busy. Repeated over time, they become the music by which we move through our days. They steady us and give us structure. Sunday morning might mean church. Friday might mean date night with a spouse. Saturday could be social time spent with good friends. A daily walk or glass of wine might mark the transition from late afternoon to evening. Preparing the evening meal, catching up with the day’s news, and winding down for bedtime all become part of the rhythm of our daily lives.
When the rhythm of life changes, we can feel disoriented whether the tempo speeds up or slows down. A new baby can turn quiet days into a blur of feeding, changing, comforting, and trying to sleep. A new job, marriage, illness, or caregiving responsibility can also alter the familiar pattern of our days. An empty nest, retirement, divorce, or loss can leave unfamiliar spaces where activity and companionship used to be. Whatever the change, the steps that once came naturally may no longer fit the music that is playing.
Life with children is one example. It creates its own rhythm—somewhat like rock and roll or heavy metal—loud, fast, energetic, and sometimes chaotic. When my sons were young, our household moved according to school hours, meals, homework, practices, appointments, bedtimes, and whatever activity came next. The school calendar determined much of the year. Summer vacation felt different from September. Friday felt different from Monday. Even weekends had their own routines.
And then the music changes. Children grow up and create lives of their own. When they leave home, they take more than their belongings with them. They also take the familiar beat created by their comings and goings. An empty nest isn’t empty simply because fewer people live in the house. The sounds and routines that once filled the days are gone. After years of activity and energy filling the family home, the sudden quiet may feel peaceful as well as unsettling. The beat has changed.
Marriage also develops its own rhythm as two people coordinate their lives over many years. Meals, conversations, household tasks, private jokes, and ordinary habits create a duet neither person may consciously hear. Divorce or death dramatically changes those patterns. The duet becomes a solo. The morning greeting, the familiar chair, the sound of someone moving in another room—all were part of the rhythm, even if no one thought to call it that. Learning to live alone means adjusting to a different beat.
So much of life seems to be about learning new music and discovering how to dance with what is showing up. Sometimes we welcome the new song. Sometimes we resist it or long for the one that came before. Most often, I suspect, we do a little of both as we gradually find our footing within a different dance.
Retirement brings one of those changes in tempo. We may spend years imagining what we will do when our time finally becomes our own. We picture leisurely mornings, travel, neglected projects, lunches with friends, and perhaps a slower waltz through days that once felt rushed. Then retirement arrives, and we discover that freedom has its own challenges. A holiday weekend doesn’t necessarily feel much different from any other weekend. Saturday can look much like Wednesday, and Monday doesn’t necessarily signal the beginning of anything. We still know what day it is—most of the time—but the days are no longer given their identities by a workweek with a TGIF at the end.
If we can do something any day, why do it today? If no one expects us to be somewhere at nine o’clock, what will get us out the door—or even out of our jammies? Without the framework that work once provided, what makes Tuesday different from Thursday? A slower tempo may be welcome, but we still need enough rhythm to keep the days from blending into one another.
Not everyone experiences retirement in the same way. A beloved friend retired only a year ago from work she truly loved. She trained new teachers, and her work gave her joy, purpose, connection, and the satisfaction of knowing that her experience was helping others. She misses it. Only a year into retirement, she is discovering that a new sense purpose takes time to emerge. Her retirement has been shaped less by what she imagined and more by the needs of the moment.
Her experience reminds me that we don’t always get to choose the music. Sometimes life changes the tempo, and we must learn how to move with it while still listening for notes that are our own.
I don’t miss working, although I’m grateful for the many years I spent in real estate. I enjoy having more say over how my time is spent. Still, retirement has required me to create new markers. Tuesday is the day Morning Cuppa Joy goes out, so my weekend is usually filled with writing. Tuesday is also Rotary day—a gathering I always look forward to. The rhythm of my week is set by book groups, card games, theater, sewing, walking Moxie, and caring for my home. Some are commitments. Some are pleasures. Quite a few are both.
Not every hour needs an assignment, nor does every day need to be productive. Rest can be part of the music. So can puttering, daydreaming, reading, or spending an afternoon making something simply because it delights us. Music needs pauses as well as notes. A life without moments of stillness would be nothing but noise.
Labor Day may mark a return to routine for many. For me, it highlights the freedom I now have to create a rhythm of my own—to notice and choose what gives my days meaning, connection, purpose, and joy.
The music will change again. It always does. We may not get to choose every song or control every change in tempo, but we can listen for the beat beneath the life we are living now. And when the rhythm changes, we can learn a new way to dance. I hope you dance.
Note: Today’s image is of my sister Alorah wind dancing on the beach–her happy place.