One life lesson that music doesn’t teach is how to retire. Nobody’s going to hand you a gold watch as you step off a stage at age 65 and tell you to call it a career. In fact, most musicians continue to play and perform throughout their lives.
Why wouldn’t they? I remember asking a friend who was retiring from a career as a bank officer what he was going to do in retirement. He said, “I’m going to learn to play piano.” It was something he’d always wanted to do, just never had the time to devote to learning to play. I also remember a customer in a nightclub in New Orleans coming up to me after a set and saying, “I’d give might right arm to be able to do what you do.” I snickered and told him it would be really hard to play piano without a right arm.
Just joking of course, but as musicians, we get to do what others might dream of as jobs. And that is a great gift. Between the joy of playing and bringing the joy of music to those who come to listen, playing music is both a great honor and something we would never be willing to give up. We might cut back our performance schedule, but I don’t know any of my musician friends who is looking to retire, to put down their instrument for good.
One of the great things about music, like other art forms, is that you never stop learning. You never stop finding new things to learn. You never stop bringing new knowledge and experience to your art.
The lesson here is that if you decide to put the time and effort into learning to play and perform music that is required to make a career of it, then you can plan on doing it not just for your job but for your life.