Apparently, I’m Still Keeping Score

I was cutting my lawn this past week when my neighbor stopped me to chat.

“Your lawn looks like Yankee Stadium,” he said.

Under most circumstances, it would just be a friendly compliment. Except my neighbor is a professional baseball player. And he played for the Yankees. And his feet have actually touched that sacred grass. He has a legitimate reference point.

That is most certainly the highest professional compliment my lawn and, by extension, me, has ever received. So, I am going to take it as a win and chalk up a score for Team Troup. (With assists from chemicals, favorable weather, and the proper mower height.)

Returning to my lawn duties, I started thinking about that compliment and how my life, and my perspective on it, have changed over a decade in retirement.

Twenty years ago, that same landscaping compliment wouldn't have even registered. It certainly wouldn't have made the standings on my scoreboard. I was so wrapped up in work and career that the lawn didn't get much attention.

Before I chose to hang up my cleats, the scoreboard was very clear. Sales results. Promotions. Compensation. Titles. Recognition. Big meetings. Bigger responsibilities. Maybe the size of the office or the importance of the people who returned my calls.

The job and the work, even other people, helped define my scoreboard. They told me what mattered and, just as importantly, how I was doing. And those things did matter to me. There is nothing necessarily wrong with that. The problem was that the old scoreboard was so big and brightly lit that it could make some of the quieter measures of a good life harder to see.

Not that a nice-looking lawn is suddenly one of the “things that really matter” in my retirement. But that compliment was a flashing green light. A symbol of how my life had changed and, maybe, how I had evolved for the better.

And yes, I see the irony here. I just published a book about retirement titled A New Game Without a Scoreboard. But it turns out that I still have a scoreboard.

It's just a different one.

Quieter. More personal. And measured by entirely different things.

Time with my family. A smile from my granddaughter. Walks with Sue and Rigby. Pickleball with old and new friends. Learning a new skill. Sunsets at the lake. Even, apparently, a nicely cut lawn.

None of these new metrics come with a trophy.

At first glance, you might think the stakes got smaller.

Not true.

My scoreboard went from measuring metrics to moments.

Maybe retirement isn't about replacing accomplishments that were “important to others” with more personal ones. Maybe it's about recovering the ability to notice things that were always there, and always valuable, but couldn't compete with the noise and glare of the old scoreboard.

As I was putting the mower away in the garage, I thought about my neighbor's compliment again. Maybe my lawn does look greener these days. But one of the best things about that lawn is simply where it is located. Next to his home and his beautiful young family. I get to watch his children play and grow in the yard next to mine. There is no metric for that. No quarterly target. No award for noticing it.

Just the simple pleasure of being there.

Twenty years ago, I probably wouldn't have remembered his comment by dinner. In fact, there's a pretty good chance I would have been on a plane or sitting in a hotel room and wouldn't have been there to receive it at all.

Today, a week later, I'm still thinking about it.

Maybe that's what has really changed. Not the size of my world or its scoreboard, but my ability to notice what's happening inside it.

Enjoyed this reflection?

I write about retirement, family, purpose, career, and the things we sometimes don't notice until life slows down enough to see them. Subscribe to The Sunny Side of 57, and I'll send new posts directly to your inbox, typically one to two times each month.

Note: Yankee Stadium photo courtesy of Dan Gold on Unsplash