People often advise retirees to get involved in volunteer activity – which can be anything from the cash register at a charity store to lobbying for a political cause.
Usually we are told that it’s good because it keeps us mentally active, which is undoubtedly true, but there is another benefit as well; it gets us involved with other people who share at least some of our interests.
Social Activities
Do you have to have a cause to have fellowship? No not at all – or rather, when you are retired and looking to create a new sense of meaning, creating it with other retirees is a cause in itself.
You might prefer to join a club of some kind or to have an arrangement with old friends – there’s nothing like getting together to share memories to create a sense of solidarity – but whether you do it formally or informally, retirees who organise events that bring them together just for fun are doing everyone a favour. After all being able to enjoy oneself after a lifetime of hard work is definitely a deserving mission.
Sharing a principle
Short of local friends? Well, there’s great value in helping out with a local cause. In 1954, a Turkish-Us social psychologist named Muzafer Sherif performed his infamous ‘Robbers Cave’ experiment. Working with a group of boys at a summer camp in Robbers Cave State Park, he divided them into two groups and let them choose their own names.
The ‘Rattlers’ and the ‘Eagles’ set into competition by Sherif, grew increasingly hostile with each other – yet when presented with some shared problems they couldn’t solve except by working together (such as fixing the water supply and clubbing together to afford a movie) their antagonism melted away. The boys joined forces, and by the end of the trip, they all cheered at the prospect of sharing the bus home, and decided to spend the money won in earlier competitions against each other on milkshakes for everyone.
Working together on a shared problem had created friendships in short order.
Shared Achievement
Obviously retirees aren’t boys at summer camp, but Sherif’s research remains critical to social psychology in general. The superordinate goal (something that can only be achieved by working together) can create a sense of satisfaction at work – but Sherif’s findings show that it’s not really the goal itself that matters. The ‘broken’ water supply and inability to ‘afford’ a movie were quite artificial.
There’s no point working towards something you don’t believe in, but psychology suggests that if you are short of ‘like minded’ people in your local area, finding even one point where you have to work together may forge new bonds where none existed before.
We don’t lose our desire to be with people when we retire – and one of the greatest satisfactions in being around other people is a sense of shared achievement.
That achievement could be as sold as campaigning for better traffic control in your area or as simple as being a fun place for retirees to go, but whatever appeals to you, don’t forget the power of friends and allies.
