October is my favorite month because fall colors are my favorite scenery.  This week I have gloried in the increasingly varied patterns of red, maroon, gold, and tan across the landscape. This week I have also written a handful of retirement cards and dropped them in the mailbox.  Those experiences have gradually merged into a single metaphor that encompasses both.

It has been almost 40 years since I took plant physiology.   I learned in that class that leaves turn color when they stop producing the green summer pigment called chlorophyll.  Without the screening effects of that dominant pigment, underlying colors are free to appear.  Fall pigments vary from species to species, resulting in a colorful patchwork of forest scenery replacing a homogeneous one.

Chlorophyll is the workhorse of any plant.  It enables the leaf to perform the magic of photosynthesis, combining water from the soil and carbon dioxide from the air into the carbohydrate of structural plant material.  When seasons change and trees prepare for winter, they send excess carbohydrates down into their roots for the winter.  The chlorophyll, no longer needed until spring, disappears.

OK, so how does this all come together as a metaphor for human retirement?  I envision our working years as the summer of our lives, when our metaphorical chlorophyll focuses on production and we adopt the colors of our surroundings. We adopt the cultures of our employers and commit to meeting their goals.  (In the Forest Service, we even dressed in green, but that is another story.)

In retirement, however, we are free to set aside the uniform of employment and allow our true colors to emerge. The firefighter is now seen as a painter, sailor, history buff, and political activist.  The employee relations expert is a world traveler. A senior leader spends some of his best days river running and wine collecting.  The historian fosters homeless pets.  Foresters and engineers care for aging parents while nurturing children or grandchildren. No longer a forest planner, I coach and run and write.  

While many have changed colors, some remain active in their original professions as contractors or volunteers.  Maybe they are like the evergreen trees that add even contrast to a colorful mountainside in fall. 

The autumns of our lives have a differerent kind of beauty from that of the seasons in which we worked toward common goals.  In retirement, we reveal our true colors as we explore the diversity of our underlying passions and skills.

Did you wear different colors during the peak of your working years than you do now?  How does it feel to release passions and talents that waited in the background for the right time to appear?