Never Retire: The Fine Line Between Respect And Being Respected
Fitting into a new culture while owning and maintaining your personality
By far, the biggest challenge I am experiencing as we settle into life in Spain is having a very rudimentary grasp of Spanish.
It blows my mind to think—realistically—that things here could somehow be better if I could speak the language even close to conversationally.
Like have actual conversations.
Not the type that prompts the polite, but untrue—Tu español es bueno—response. People here are cool. Super cool, actually. And I appreciate it. But I want and expect more from myself. So I am—slowly but surely—setting on a path to study harder, better and more often so I get to conversational Spanish sooner rather than later.
The unease around not being able to speak Spanish well enough shows itself in related areas. They hit me over the weekend. One, in response to a casual remark from a new friend. The other, as I got very nervous and ultimately shot down a dumb, if not inappropriate political rant that—thankfully—didn’t turn into a conversation.
As I thought about writing up these experiences, I also considered the constructive feedback that this newsletter is less about Never Retiring and more about living abroad.
True, to the extent that I am writing less about concrete Never Retire concepts and strategies as they relate to personal finance and retirement. Not so true to the extent that—as we have evolved the concept—the experiences I am having, as we settle into life in Spain and I struggle with Spanish, are practical examples of what it means to Never Retire in the larger sense of the idea.
I don’t need this shit. At my age—or any age, really—I don’t need to be dealing with any of this. A new dynamic in which to (re)set up life and interact with others in a new language I can barely comprehend.
The easy thing to do—at my age or, at any age really—is to stop at I don’t need to deal with this shit and go on with my comfortable life.
However, a Never Retire approach to life rejects this nonsense.
It calls you to challenge yourself out of comfortable situations and do what’s necessary to keep your body and mind on their toes. So that—like with a good workout routine—they’re constantly in a healthy and productive state of stress and repair. They grow and evolve rather than go through the motions in what is ultimately a familiar and stagnant state.
I wake up every morning eager to take on all of the challenges. They’re what I wanted. They’re what I’m getting. And none of them are all that surprising. It’s just the specific contexts within which the challenges sometimes occur that I never anticipated.
For example—