As You Like It: Writing Your Life Script
By: Source: AARP.org Date Posted: 2004-10-01 00:00:00-04:00
By Barbara Rohrer, Wyoming Department of Workforce Services
"All the world’s a stage,
and all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts."
-- William Shakespeare, "As You Like It"
While Shakespeare likely didn’t have retirement planning in mind when he wrote "As You Like It," the bard did create an excellent metaphor for exploring the roles we play in life.
Twenty-first century psychologists sometimes refer to "life scripts" as a tool for exploring our lives.
What roles do you want to play in your "middlessence" and beyond? Are you staging a third act, or allowing someone else to write a surprise ending? Will you have a plan to see your life script play out as you like it?
Financial planning is certainly an important part of staging your life, but there’s more to a good script than money. Consider the playwright’s creations of character and motivation, plot and timing, lead roles and supporting players. Cast yourself as the star, and begin to think of your life as the longest-running play to not appear on Broadway.
Charting Your Life
Writing your life script begins with a simple list of personal and professional roles you play now. Financial planning doesn’t enter the life script process just yet, although the scripting process does provide valuable input for reassessing your financial plan and your retirement strategy.
You may be surprised at the number of roles you’re juggling and the realization that some of the best roles are still ahead!
Here’s a hypothetical list from a working woman, Lydia, in no particular order: wife, grandma, mom, loan officer, personal shopper for parents, caretaker for parents, friend, traveler, household manager.
It can be helpful at this stage to write some character notes for each role, to capture the qualities and skills you draw upon in fulfilling your roles, as well as the frustrations. This is a good way to write about responsibilities, personal needs, and dreams. It also sets the stage for evaluating your investments, both emotional and financial, into each role.
The next step, using the sample worksheet, is to recast your roles in the first column, and then in the next two columns; estimate how much energy you are investing into each role and how much satisfaction you experience in return. Use a scale of 1 to 10 (1 is lowest, 10 highest) to evaluate your roles.
The third step is to consider new roles that may be inevitable (such as a caretaker for a spouse), or highly desirable (such as a new career or hobby).
Lydia has always wanted to return to college and complete an art degree; she’s dreamed for years of painting landscapes and maybe even placing her work in a community gallery. So she pencils in "student" and "artist" roles for herself, and begins to think about her resources. It would mean tuition, fees, supplies, and time away from other roles as she becomes a college student – but the investments will create a satisfying new lead role that also could become an art business. The art business, she muses, could allow her to deduct some of her future travel expenses!
The fourth step is identifying which roles may require more financing and energy, as well as which roles need to be moved offstage. Make a few notes, but don’t spend time crunching numbers just yet; you are creating priorities for your financial and retirement planning. This is a good time for reviewing your needs and wants (see sample provided) with your stage partner.
Review Your Script
Now, take a look at your overall script. If this was someone else’s play, how would you review it?
Take another look at Lydia’s script. It is obvious that some of her low-satisfaction roles could negatively affect her retirement years, which she has been loosely defining as the life she’ll lead after she leaves her banking career at age 67 – just six years down the road.
Lydia sees the need to shift and share some of the burden of caring for her parents, financially and emotionally. She also wants to spend more time with her friends, her oil paints and her husband – preferably on the road. She realizes that her financial planning hasn’t allowed for the potential long-term burden of caring for her parents or her spouse, nor has she put a lot of thought into how she’ll actually have the time for her most fulfilling roles.
Fortunately, the art school she admires is in the same city as her grandchildren, only two hours away from the home in which she and her husband raised their children. Moving into a smaller home has been a discussion item for several years, but perhaps it’s time to consider location as well.
If you are planning "middlessence" and more with a partner, it might be interesting to write life scripts independently and then view the plays as co-directors. Another useful variation is including the roles of other players – children, coworkers, relatives, etc.
You may discover villains who need excising or understudies worth pulling into the limelight!
However you etch, the life script begins to dictate some plot changes. Like Lydia, you may discover the most satisfying roles you’ll ever play in life will demand new lines, extra rehearsals and some twists.
(Next issue: How to write a "working" retirement plan that meets your life-script needs and wants.)
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