Does drifting make you indecisive?  

I sometimes hear people who have recently retired say that they’ve resisted making any plans because they just want to “drift for a bit”.

I sympathise with that notion, and it’s understandable after years of being at everyone’s beck and call. But if it goes on too long, I believe there’s a danger of such folk losing focus, purposefulness, and the ability to make decisions.

My friend Alison messaged me from Canada last week in great excitement while visiting her daughter who is on a two-year work placement there.

Clearly, she’s having the best time. But she pointed out that the crucial, and hardest, factor for her had been finding the courage to decide to go. After that, all the bookings and the actual travel felt relatively easy.  

Let me give you the background to her triumph – and it is a triumph, because it was far from easy.  

Alison’s daughter went to Canada 15 months ago and Alison promised to go and see her as soon as possible. But she has a partner who is still working and isn’t keen on travelling.

And by her own admission, she had been “drifting” pretty aimlessly since she had retired and felt diffident about making the trip alone.

So, months passed. What changed that? A cousin of hers, who was slightly older but who had always been very fit, was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer. Alison was deeply shocked and saddened, but it gave her the impetus she needed.

“I suddenly felt I was missing out and that my indecisiveness was making me old before my time. And my cousin’s illness made me realise that sometimes if you want to do something badly enough, whether or not you have a partner, you might have to step up and do it alone.”

But why do we tend to drift and become more indecisive as we age?

I think worries about money often hold us back.

Sometimes too, our confidence in our abilities takes a knock because we no longer have the status and structure of full-time work. Also, I think we can often feel less valuable as individuals, and that leads to us feeling that our own needs are less important than those of others.

I know a retired doctor who volunteered for an organisation two days a week. Before long, they began making more and more demands on his time. Knowing that they needed him gave him the same sense of usefulness he’d had during his medical career.

He liked it – at first. But soon the voluntary job was taking over his life and the accompanying stress outweighed the pleasure.

Eventually, after a run of sleepless nights, he rediscovered his decisiveness, and told them he must cut back his commitment to the original arrangement, in order to have more time for family and friends.

Much to his surprise there was no fuss at all. They thanked him fulsomely for all he had done and especially for staying with them.

Reducing commitments to family members though, can be even harder. Many of us have adult children who seem overwhelmed by jobs, commuting, parenting and so on. Remembering our own earlier lives when we were rushed off our feet, we make ourselves available for childcare and shopping and anything else that might help. And because we’re no longer as busy as we once were, we tend to say things like: “Don’t worry. I’ll be there when you need me. I can fit round you…”

However, that can lead to our routines being more about their needs than ours. Of course, it’s good to be considerate and supportive. But what happens if you start feeling it’s all a bit much? How decisive are you then? And how good at remembering that you too have a right to a life and time for yourself?

For example, suppose your son asked you to have his children overnight one Saturday so that he and his wife could stay late at a party? But suppose too, this conflicted with a long-term and eagerly anticipated arrangement to go to the theatre with a friend. What would you do?

I know someone who was in that very situation and felt so dithery and anxious about it that she didn’t discuss it with either of them and simply hoped it would somehow resolve itself. It didn’t, and by the time she spoke up, both her son and friend were extremely annoyed.

If only she had made the decision right at the beginning that she wanted to go to the theatre, and had told her son immediately, and maybe even offered to find and fund another  babysitter, everyone would have been fine.

She would also have saved herself a lot of distress.   

Being decisive is a skill we should hang on to. Without it, we’re likely to diminish the amount of variety and stimulus in our lives – and that won’t help any of us to stay young for longer.

Quite the reverse.