<table style="border-collapse: collapse;" align="right" border="0" bordercolor="#111111" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="200"> <tbody> <tr> <td style="width: 10px;" align="left" valign="top"> </td> <td style="width: 240px;" align="left" valign="top"> </td></tr></tbody></table> Retirement is a mixed blessing. If you love your career, you might dread your last official workday. If you hate your job, the big R beckons like a finish line at the end of a hard race. Most of us fall somewhere in between. We like our jobs. We also like our leisure. We think of retirement as a time to do things we always wanted to do, but understand that we are what we are and life won’t change that much. We might travel a little more. We might sleep in an extra hour. But that’s it. And most jobs aren’t that dramatic, so the grand finale isn’t dramatic either. You retire. Life goes on. The best retirement I ever saw was in Tijuana, Mexico. After the afternoon’s bullfights were done, a matador folded up his cape for the final time and said Adios to his life as a bullfighter. With the pomp and circumstance that befits bullfighting, the matador walked to the middle of the ring and took off his matador hat, exposing his ponytail. A bullfighting official pulled out a pair of scissors and cut off the matador’s tail. It was a simple ceremony, a moving ceremony, and there was something very right about the cut. A part of this man’s life was done forever. Without his signature ponytail, the matador was now just a man. http://www.fightbeat.com/article_detail.php?AT=502
