Retirement is the filthiest word in the language.
— Ernest Hemingway
Some words should be retired.
Retired is one of them.
Just as we no longer call anyone "colored" or "retarded," we shouldn't call anyone retired.
The word means, to most people, "purposeless."
Hemingway told his biographer and friend, A. E. Hotchner, that retirement was like a terrible death.
"The worst death for anyone is to lose the center of his being, the thing he really is," Hemingway said.
"Whether by choice or by fate, to retire from what you do and what makes you what you are, is to back up into the grave."
"Retired" means purposeless: half-dead, half-gone, half-forgotten.
Over the hill. Out to pasture. Lingering about with one foot in the grave.
Retirement, indeed, is the filthiest word in the language.
