Disruption, or Adventure? What Happens When A Man Steps Away from His Career

I've been considering this (somewhat academic) quote:

"...[A] human group can be considered as a collection of persons who understand themselves and proximal others as fitting within a social category, as being emotionally invested in the category that unites them." (Antiss, Men’s Re-Placement… p. 220)

In other words, a group of people consider themselves as a group when they all fit into a certain category -- and particularly, a category that they care about.

For most of us, one of the central defining categories is our work, and certainly our work place. What is a working group if not "a human group...fitting within a social category"?

Which gives us some understanding of what it means when a man steps out of their human group -- their work -- especially when they have been part of that group, that "social category," for decades.

It means that man has stepped out of the leading defining social categories of his life. And that now he has to find new social categories to give him a similar sense of belonging.

As much as the opportunity to step beyond a career after many decades offers new opportunities, it also means a powerful disruption of multiple factors that give men purpose, meaning, and focus, including: belonging, social support, solidarity and efforts to help others (Antiss, p. 222).

I created Adventure:Next exactly to respond to that disruption, and to help men find the opportunity awaiting them in their new phase.

[Check out the picture below, which catches me reading that quote, and the article it came from: "Men's re-placement: Social practices in a Men's Shed," written by David Antiss, Darrin Hodgetts, Ottilie Stolte and published in Health & Place, vol. 51, 2018.