What a Super Bowl Champion and a Surgeon Taught Me About Retirement
They never did retire!
I’ve been thinking about two men I recently interviewed for my On the Brink with Andi Simon podcast.
One is a three-time Super Bowl champion. The other is one of New Jersey’s most respected orthopedic surgeons.
By most definitions, both are retired.
Except neither of them is.
As I listened to Bart Oates and Dr. Vincent McInerney tell their stories, I realized they weren’t talking about retirement at all. They were talking about purpose.
Bart’s football career ended decades ago. Like every professional athlete, he knew his playing days would be short — most NFL players leave the game before they turn thirty. Bart played longer than most. But he also knew something many of us forget: your career is only one chapter of your life.
Long before he left football, he had earned a law degree. More importantly, he had begun preparing emotionally for what came next.
Dr. McInerney has spent more than forty years helping athletes recover from injuries. Today he still teaches residents, mentors younger physicians, explores new regenerative treatments, and talks with the excitement of someone beginning a career, not ending one.
Neither man spoke about slowing down. Neither talked about finally doing nothing.
Instead, they talked about serving. Helping. Teaching. Learning. Remaining curious.
It made me wonder why so many people imagine retirement as the reward for decades of work.
Finish working. Buy the house. Play golf. Travel. Relax. Repeat.
Then what?
During the ethnographic research I conducted for Rethink Retirement, I met many people who had done exactly that. They had accumulated enough money. They had checked every financial box.
But they had never prepared for the loss of identity. Or community. Or purpose.
One retired executive told me that after leaving work, he called former colleagues to have lunch. Nobody came.
Another woman missed her daily commute into New York more than she missed her job — because the people on the train had become her community.
Those stories stayed with me as I listened to Bart and Vince. Both men described lives centered not on accomplishment, but on contribution.
One comment especially stayed with me: neither believed happiness comes from focusing on yourself. Instead, they suggested fulfillment comes from asking a different question —
Whose life can I make a little better today?
I’ve now interviewed hundreds of remarkable people on On the Brink. Entrepreneurs. Scientists. Physicians. Authors. Business leaders. Artists.
The happiest among them share one characteristic: they never stop contributing.
Their titles change. Their schedules change. Sometimes their health changes. But they continue giving away what they know.
Perhaps that’s the real anthropology of retirement. Across cultures, elders have rarely been valued because they stopped working. They were valued because they became the keepers of wisdom — teachers, mentors, storytellers, healers, guides.
Somewhere along the way, many of us began to believe retirement meant withdrawing from the very roles that once made older adults indispensable.
Maybe it’s time to rethink that.
Perhaps retirement isn’t about leaving work. Perhaps it’s about discovering the work that only this stage of life allows us to do.
As I finished my conversation with Bart and Vince, I wasn’t thinking about football. Or surgery.
I was thinking about something much simpler: neither man had retired. Both had simply found another way to matter.
And perhaps that’s the invitation waiting for all of us.
Listen in and share your thoughts: https://www.simonassociates.net/?p=43967
Learn more about Rethink Retirement and upcoming workshops at AndiSimon.com.