やめるより 続けるほうがいい 波の音と
Better to go on
than stop—like the sound of waves
that never clock out.
I don’t want to retire. Not because I love work. Not because I’m some stoic disciple of hustle culture. But because I never imagined a version of myself that simply… stops.
Maybe that’s a flaw. Or maybe it’s a kind of loyalty—to the quiet pulse of doing something that matters. Even when no one notices.
I come from a long line of people who never stopped. My grandparents worked until their hands gave out. Until their knees could no longer bend. Until their breath turned shallow but their will remained deep. They were farmers, builders, seamstresses, nurses. People who understood that meaning wasn’t given, it was made—in the cracks of dawn and the sore-shouldered evenings.
My grandmother used to rise before the sun, cook for the family, and tend a garden that fed more than just our stomachs. It fed our dignity. She grew potatoes that tasted like kindness and beans that hummed with quiet strength. I remember her hands. Bent, scarred, gentle. She never called herself tired, even when she was. Work was not what took from her—it was what kept her.
She would wipe her brow with the hem of her apron, and then pause just long enough to listen. To birds. To weather. To silence. That pause was her prayer.
My grandfather built houses. Laid bricks with the same precision he used to stir sugar into his coffee. He never had much to say about his work. Just that “it stood.” That was his measure of pride: it stood. I used to think that was too small a dream. Now I think it was the biggest kind of love. To make something that stays upright, even when you’re gone.
He once let me carry his level. A simple tool—a small vial of liquid inside a metal bar. “The bubble tells the truth,” he said. “It doesn’t care how hard you worked if the wall’s not straight.”
They didn’t retire. They slowed. And then, one day, they simply didn’t wake up to the alarm.
My parents followed suit. They left their hometowns to find factory jobs and make enough to raise kids in a world that had already outrun them. My mother cleaned hotel rooms for thirty years. She never once complained. I asked her once if she ever wanted to stop.
She looked at me, half-laughing. “Stop and do what? Wait to die?”
At the time, I thought that was tragic. Now I think it was honest. She found rhythm in the repetition. In knowing what each day would ask of her. In folding sheets with corners so tight they held the shape of her pride. She didn’t want to stop. She wanted to matter.
She told me once that when she made a room beautiful, she left a little piece of herself behind. A perfectly folded towel. A window that let in morning light. A bed smoothed so clean it looked like calm.
My father was quieter about it. He worked construction, wore the same boots until the soles gave in. Even now, he still “helps out” at his friend’s small carpentry business. Says he likes the sawdust. The smell of real things being shaped. He has arthritis in both hands, but says it hurts less when he’s busy.
I think that’s true for a lot of us.
When people talk about retirement, they speak of leisure like it’s salvation. Travel, hobbies, golf. But I’ve seen too many people disappear into that stillness. Not in a peaceful way. In a forgotten way. They go from being someone to no one. From having a reason to wake up, to sleeping in without hunger.
I’m not afraid of aging. I’m afraid of being unnecessary.
Maybe that’s why I keep doing things that don’t make sense on paper. Writing blog posts that earn nothing. Fixing broken bowls with gold because I can’t stand to see something tossed away. Having long, meandering conversations with strangers at flea markets. None of it pays. But all of it matters.
Because I was taught that the value of a thing isn’t in how long it lasts, but in whether it left something behind. A repaired cup. A cleaned room. A sturdy wall. A sentence that held someone’s breath for a moment longer than usual.
I think about the kind of old man I want to become. Not the kind who sits by the window waiting for someone to visit. I want to be the one who still shows up, even if no one asks.
To still write, even if the eyes blur. Still shape clay, even if the fingers stiffen. Still fix what I can. Still grow something from soil.
I don’t want to retire because I don’t want to drift. I want to keep swimming until the tide turns me over. I want to keep saying thank you to the world, in whatever small ways I still can. With hands, with words, with presence.
To retire would mean to step out of that conversation. To go quiet when there’s still something worth saying.
I think that’s the saddest thing of all.
People think work is what burns us out. But I think it’s the absence of meaning that does. To work without joy, yes—that will eat you alive. But to do something out of love, out of care, out of need? That is a kind of fuel.
My grandmother kept weaving long after her vision failed. She wove by feel. The blankets got crooked. The patterns broke. But she said they kept her warm. And not just physically.
I understood too late.
Sometimes I imagine a different life. One where I made more money, saved better, bought a house early, planned for a smooth retirement. But that version of me is someone I don’t know how to love. He is quiet in a way that feels like absence, not peace.
I want noise. I want the clatter of tools, the smell of old books, the soft crack of glaze cooling on a freshly fired cup. I want to wake up tired because I gave the day something.
Even if it’s just one person reading this.
Even if it’s just me.
I don’t want to retire. I want to keep walking until the shoes wear out. Then I’ll go barefoot.
Then I’ll crawl.
But I’ll still be going.
There is a Japanese phrase I love: 『ikigai』. A reason for being.
It is not your job. It is not your title. It is the thing that makes you glad the sun came up again.
Some find it in raising a child. Some in fixing an engine. Some in writing words no one may read. But it’s there. And when you find it, you don’t want to stop. You don’t want to retire. You want to keep honoring it, however you can.
So I keep writing. I keep fixing. I keep listening. I keep showing up, even when the voice is quiet.
Wabi-sabi teaches us this: there is beauty in what is worn, what is chipped, what is fading. Not because it is broken, but because it has endured. Retirement, for me, feels like an attempt to polish what should be left raw. Life is not a bowl to be stored on a shelf. It is one that should be used, repaired, used again. And again. Until the gold lines of all its cracks gleam with memory.
Like my grandfather’s level. Like my grandmother’s bent fingers. Like my mother’s quiet pride. Like my own scratched desk, still bearing the weight of these words.
So what does this mean for you, reader?
Maybe you’re wondering if you’re wasting your time on small things. Maybe you’ve been told you’re too old to start over, or too young to matter. But maybe—just maybe—the small things are the whole point. Maybe it’s the way you greet the mailman. The way you mend your coat. The way you pick up the phone when it rings.
You don’t need to do what I do. But you do need to keep doing what keeps you human. Stay useful. Stay soft. Stay in motion. Make something that outlives you.
And if you have no idea where to begin, maybe start here:
What small thing could you do today that leaves a trace of care?
Tell me in the comments. I’ll be here, still writing. Still listening.
Because we don’t stop.
We continue.
life 
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