To Telic or Not to Telic: Why Retirement Feels Psychologically Strange

There’s a quiet contradiction at the heart of modern retirement. Retirement with purpose and meaning? I thought I gave those up when I stopped working and retired? Your body may have stopped being a cog in the daily machine of commerce, but your brain is still hardwired to the engine. Your brain is still driving forward. It’s in pursuit of tasks that need finishing. Then it can move forward with the next one.

So when people finally achieve the goal they spent decades working toward…

…it’s not surprising that they quietly wonder why it doesn’t feel the way they expected.

Not immediately, of course.

At first, retirement often feels exactly the way it was supposed to feel: freedom, flexibility, relief, and time.

But after the honeymoon phase wears off, many retirees describe something harder to explain.

A lingering restlessness.

A strange emotional flatness.

A feeling that something important has shifted.

Almost like a kind of psychological migration restlessness.

There’s actually a German word, zugunruhe, used to describe the instinctive agitation migratory birds experience before seasonal movement begins. Biologists sometimes describe it as “migratory restlessness.”

And honestly, I sometimes wonder if humans experience something psychologically similar approaching retirement.

Not because something is wrong.

But because we may be sensing movement toward an entirely new phase of life before we fully understand what that new phase is supposed to look like.

Not unhappiness.

But not quite fulfillment either. A kind of “wow, this is awesome, followed by the eventual, oh, is this it?”

And for many people, that feeling arrives with a surprising amount of confusion. After all, retirement was supposed to be the reward. The finish line. The moment where all the years of pressure, responsibility, deadlines, and sacrifice finally paid off.

Retirement Purpose and Meaning – What’s Really At Play Here?

So why can it feel psychologically unsettling once you finally get there?

The answer may have less to do with retirement itself…

…and more to do with how most of us were taught to pursue life in the first place.

Your “psychologically unsettling” sensation post retirement is normal. Here are the two things that might be at play here – telics and hedonic adaptation. The ideas themselves are actually surprisingly recognizable once you strip away the labels.

The Problem With Living Entirely Through Goals

For most of our lives — arguably beginning as early as high school — life is organized around what philosophers call telic activities.

A telic activity moves toward completion of something, such as a goal.

Examples include:

• building a career
• earning promotions
• raising children
• paying off a mortgage
• saving for retirement
• reaching milestones

The point of these activities is to finish them.

And for decades, these goals quietly provide far more than income or achievement.

They provide:

• structure
• urgency
• reinforcement
• momentum
• identity
• direction

There is always another benchmark. Always another deadline, objective, or problem to solve.

You always know where you stand. Then retirement arrives, the goal, the finish line is here.

And suddenly, that which once propelled your life forward disappears.

The deadlines vanish.
The urgency fades.
The milestones stop.

For the first time in decades, there may be no externally imposed momentum telling you what matters and what you’re supposed to strive for today. If your purpose was always “the next rung,” what is it now?

That transition is psychologically stranger than most people expect.

Especially for people who spent years operating inside high-performance environments.

So, let me use myself as an example. I pursued careers and obtained them as an ICU/Trauma Nurse and a Fire Chief. So I spent decades inside telic systems built around urgency, responsibility, movement, and problem-solving.

Looking back, I now realize how much psychological infrastructure existed inside that pace of life.

Not just professionally.
Personally too.

And like many retirees, it never occurred to me to consider how to live without it. How “not to telic,” if you will. Technically, the word for it would be atelic. I just opted for the Shakespearean flair of “to telic or not to telic” in the title.

Why Achievement Alone Doesn’t Sustain Meaning

Part of the issue may involve something psychologists call hedonic adaptation.

Research suggests that people adapt surprisingly quickly to both positive and negative life changes. What initially feels exciting or deeply rewarding gradually becomes normal.

This helps explain why major achievements often produce satisfaction…

…but not necessarily lasting fulfillment.

We spend years pursuing:

• a title
• a promotion
• financial security
• retirement itself

And once we finally arrive there, the emotional reward often fades faster than expected.

The problem is not that the goal was meaningless.

The problem is assuming that achievement alone can sustain meaning indefinitely.

For decades, many people unknowingly build their emotional lives around forward momentum. Around striving. Around completion.

But eventually, the completions begin accumulating.

And retirement may be the first time many people stop long enough to notice the difference between:

• achievement
  and
• engagement.

The Difference Between Achievement and Participation

This is where philosopher Kieran Setiya’s work becomes particularly interesting.

Setiya contrasts telic activities with what he calls “atelic” activities.

Unlike achievement-oriented goals, atelic activities do not exist to be completed.

Their value exists inside the experience itself.

Examples include:

• walking
• conversation
• learning
• friendship
• creative work
• reading
• time in nature
• curiosity
• meaningful connection

You don’t “finish” these things. And we naturally tend to gravitate to them to increase happiness, or at least improve our moods.

You participate in them.

That distinction is important when you retire.

Your externally imposed momentum has all but disappeared. If you don’t recognize or accept that, then many people will instinctively continue approaching life through the same achievement framework that shaped their working years.

What should I accomplish next? What should I be striving toward now? What actually makes a life feel meaningful once the major milestones are behind you? What will make me happy now?

But retirement may require a different relationship with life itself.

Not endless productivity.

Not permanent leisure either.

But deeper participation in the activities that are done for the simple joy of them.

Why Retirement Can Feel So Psychologically Strange

One of the biggest misconceptions about retirement is the idea that freedom automatically creates fulfillment.

But freedom without a set direction can also create disorientation. And as we adapt to the new normal, the “high” of reaching that new finish line – retirement – goes back to a baseline of happiness.

Especially for people whose identity was heavily reinforced through usefulness, responsibility, competence, and momentum – goal achievement – retiring can feel odd pretty fast.

That does not mean retirement is bad. It simply means the psychological transition is more complex than most people anticipate.

Because retirement is not just a financial transaction or a schedule change.

It is a:

• momentum transition
• an identity transformation
• an infrastructure alteration
• and often, a purpose and meaning shift too.

This may be why retirees like you and me eventually discover that “staying busy” does not necessarily restore a sense of fulfillment.

Because activity is not the same thing as engagement. Activity is telic, engagement is atelic.

And you can’t sustain your newly acquired retirement happiness high indefinitely with the sort of busyness that fails to generate much joy. Busy is not the same thing as joy, purpose, or meaningfulness.

That realization sits at the center of how I started to philosophically approach my retirement.

My goal was not simply to recreate work under a different name.

The deeper adjustment for retirement may involve something akin to the Zen Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Or more simply put, approach the next part of your life like a craftsman approaches quality, through mindfulness and pursuit of excellence rather than the quantity of achievements.

Working a Brand New Shift

You may find that the shift works.

When the goal is no longer simply:

• completing tasks
• accumulating achievements
• or constantly proving usefulness.

It can gradually become:

• reconnecting with curiosity
• rebuilding engagement
• restoring momentum
• expanding identity beyond work
• developing new forms of contribution
• and learning how to feel emotionally alive again without needing constant urgency to create movement.

That is not a small adjustment. That’s the deeper adjustment. That may be the deeper adjustment retirement quietly asks many people to make.

Final thoughts: A Better Way to Think About Retirement

Maybe retirement is not simply the reward waiting at the end of work. It’s the bridge to a different relationship with:

• time
• identity
• ambition
• meaning
• and participation itself.

Recommended Reading

• If I’m Retired, Do I still Need to Make My Bed every day?
• Are You Reinventing Your Life After Retirement — Or For Retirement?
• Retirement Transition: The Science Behind Why It Feels Harder Than Expected

References

This article draws from research and philosophical work related to retirement transition, meaning, well-being, behavioral adaptation, and psychological health, including:

Setiya, K. (2017). Midlife: A Philosophical Guide. Princeton University Press.
Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

Brickman, P., & Campbell, D. T. (1971). Hedonic adaptation and the hedonic treadmill.
Hedonic Treadmill Overview

Keyes, C. L. M. (2021). Languishing and mental health in times of transition. Frontiers in Psychology.
Languishing and Mental Health in Times of Transition

Ryff, C. D. (1989). Happiness is Everything, or Is It? Explorations on the Meaning of Psychological Well-Being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57(6), 1069–1081.
Psychological Well-Being Research Summary

Steger, M. F. (2012). Making Meaning in Life. Psychological Inquiry, 23(4), 381–385.
Making Meaning in Life