Aramco Expats

Reflections on Retirement

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Author: Tom Watson
Released 1 July 2008

Tom Watson

I will turn 60 years of age next month.  It should be just another date on the calendar, and a somewhat humorous occasion where the number of candles for the birthday cake represents a serious safety risk.  But it is much more. This is the mandatory retirement age according to Company policy.  Had I not been the recipient of the Company’s generous offer to extend my service, I would be expected to leave my job and my home for the last ten years on the first of the month following this 60th anniversary of my birth.  As it is, I have a few more months.  But I know the time is short. I can almost hear the countdown clock ticking… it is getting louder!  I have been reflecting on the implications of this event.

• I am the oldest person in my department.  I don’t necessarily look or feel the oldest, but I am.  Some have told me I look much younger than my actual years.  But this does not change the chronological reality, flattering though it may be.  I don’t much like this feeling.  I cannot reconcile this reality with my inner self image, which is a twenty-something young man setting out to experience life and the great unknown.  I certainly do not feel like my professional life is or should be over. I also know I have more to offer than the time remaining will allow.  It is a strange feeling to know that somewhere along the way I got “too old.”  How can that be?

• A great deal of insight and experience will leave with me.  After 35 years of professional work experience, 10½ with this company when I finally leave, I have lots of experience, organizational knowledge, and insight.  How do I effectively transfer this to those who remain when I leave?  And more broadly, can this company, can any company really afford to lose this much knowledge and experience and suffer no loss?  Apparently they can.  Expat turnover has averaged about 10% for the last several years.  This has been going on for a long time, as waves of 60-year old, highly knowledgeable and experienced expats have retired.  The company is well aware of the loss of this expat talent and appears to accept it.  But can they really afford to accept it?

• Will my contributions be missed?  My friend, Darryl, offered this analogy when he left last year. Although somewhat cynical, it is accurate; “When you take your hand out of a bowl of water in which it has been immersed, what happens?  Does the water miss the hand?”  The level of the water will drop slightly, but instantly the water fills in the space taken by the hand that is removed.  In like manner, a large company like ours quickly compensates for the missing talents and activities of departing staff.  Some are picked up by other staff, some stop getting done and nobody notices. It is more than likely that some of the things I consider important and critical are not and will not be done by others after I am gone.  So be it.  But it makes me sad, somehow discounting the work I have been doing the last year.

• Was that the last time I will ever see him or her or that location?  It seems unlikely to me at this time that I will ever return to Saudi Arabia once I retire.  So I am in the season of my last goodbyes.  But I have not figured out how to say them, so I don’t.  Because of the work I have done, I know and am known by many. Because of the size and the geographical spread of company locations, there are many people I know who are widely dispersed.  I now realize I may never see many of them again.  Some I am seeing for the last time, but at the time, I am not sure of this… so I say nothing.  Some come up to me and say, “I heard you are retiring.”  Well, I am, but so are we all, sooner or later. What they mean is “I heard you are retiring SOON!”  But even after this conversation, no goodbyes are said.  So, I am often saddened by the fact that I am seeing people and places for the last time and am not saying a proper goodbye.  And when I do say goodbye, as I did with a friend and professional colleague who retired and left last month, it is SO very hard to do…. ‘A sign of my advancing years, no doubt! I am nearly 60, after all.’

• What is my legacy?  Another friend of mine who retired 3 years ago has shared his insights about “finishing well.”  This is about how you use the remaining years of your life. I am definitely interested in this.  More so when I hear about guys like Tim Russert, the U.S. TV newsman who died of a heart attack unexpectedly at age 58.  My friend advises me that what I do with the years I have remaining will have a lot to do with the legacy I leave.  For my 10½ years with the company, however, whatever legacy I will leave has already been mostly “left”. And how interesting, I find, to realize that this really matters to me.  It is not that I would like my legacy to be that I was a likable person, or a valued colleague (although these are important to me).  I would prefer a legacy that has to do with a significant contribution to the department, to the Company, and/or to my profession, that would not have happened had I not been here.  But as I reflect on these things, I now realize that whatever it will be… it already is!!  There is not much I can do in my remaining time to significantly change what the legacy may be.  Very sobering. 

• The approach/avoidance dilemma of leaving.   I am looking forward to life after Aramco. My wife and I are both reasonably healthy and active.  There are lots of interesting places we want to see and things we want to do... we will have the time, and hopefully enough money to do them.  If not, we can always work.  We both have professional skills which in the U.S. economy are still valued after age 60.  But, I am going to miss this place… and the people I worked with, and played golf with, and socialized with, and got to know and love.  There is no way back, that I can see.   So when that day comes, we must say goodbye pretty much forever to the life we knew here in Dhahran, to friends who remain, and those who will also leave and scatter to parts unknown…. It is HARD to say goodbye to all of this and all of them.  It is hard to know you will never return again, and unless you have a very specific purpose, would not even be welcome to come back.  Although we sometimes felt otherwise, we have been mostly happy here.  We look forward to leaving, and we are saddened when we think about leaving. 

These reflections on retirement lead me to these final conclusions.  It is a bit morbid, but I believe that retiring from Saudi Aramco has a lot of parallels with dying:

• You won’t see this place or many of these people ever again
• You may not want to go but you must.. not only you, but everyone has to retire here… eventually.
• Those with faith expect there to be a new and interesting life after retirement (and there is!)
• You are likely to see some of your former colleagues “on the other side.”
• Saying goodbye is very hard to do (at least it is for me).

But it also differs from dying in some very interesting ways:

• You have lots of advance notice and can even select the exact day
• The process the company has to facilitate your orderly exit is thorough and efficient (now online!)
• You can take it with you (at least your material possessions).

My reaction to my retirement most closely parallels what is likely to be my reaction to a terminal illness, if that happens to be in my future.  It has to do with dealing with the emotions of grief.  Many people have tried to explain what grief is; some have even identified certain stages of grief. The most well-known of these might be from Elizabeth Kubler-Ross' book, "On Death and Dying." In it, she identified five stages that a dying patient experiences when informed of their terminal prognosis.  I have added examples from an impending retiree:

I have been through all five of these emotions recently, sometimes all in the same day.  I find that a person or an event in my day can send me right back into any one of these five.  I have come to accept that only time will resolve this.  So I am waiting for it to come… my retirement… my final goodbye… the beginning of a new life… an end to this emotional roller coaster that my life has become and an acceptance of a new reality.  And I can see myself saying, even singing the words of the well known song, commonly identified with the American Civil Rights movement:

“Free at last, free at last.  I thank God I am free at last.”

(Editor’s Note:  Tom Watson turns 60 years young on 7/13/2008 and will retire 2/1/2009.)