What gift would you give a soon-to-be retiree?
MARC AGRONIN: Blacksmith, cobbler and travel agent: What do these jobs have in common? I would present a copy of the book “Jazz” by the great French painter Henri Matisse, with the following explanation. In 1941, the 71-year-old Matisse experienced a forced retirement after undergoing a serious abdominal surgery that left him frail and bedbound for many months. It was not clear that he would ever paint again, and his life span appeared measured in months. Although he did manage to survive, he faced many more debilitating infections and other ailments, in addition to the stresses of living in Nazi-occupied France where his beloved daughter was imprisoned by the Gestapo. All of these factors could have easily dealt a death blow to the work of the master artist, but this was not Matisse’s path. Instead, he used this time to reconsider and revise his work, writing how “it’s like being given a second life.”