A current headline on the AARP Web site asks, “Are You Ready for Retirement?” When you click on the link, it brings you to a calculator. Hmmmm. With all the grim economic stories leading newspapers, magazines and telecasts these days, we are often confronted with the word “retirement” and all that it means. But this is how I know? Through numbers and dollar signs? No questions about career satisfaction, overall joyfulness or health status?

No, it seems you’re “ready” to retire in this society when you’ve hit a certain number chronologically and when you’ve stashed enough away financially. Retirement Nirvana, then, is having those two things perfectly coincide.

I have no empirical evidence of this, but I think it’s true that people who work because they have to, at a job they’re not crazy about, are the ones who look at this, our current societal concept of retirement, wistfully. The rest of us are thinking this: Are you crazy? Why would I check out of society before I want to? Isn’t that the definition of dying?

When I read stories about people like Si Newhouse and Rupert Murdoch running media empires, or how the recently deceased Dr. Michael DeBakey drove a sports car to the hospital every day even in his 90s, or when I think of Nancy Pelosi holding one of the highest governmental posts in the land, it strikes me they always appear to be too enjoyably busy to think about putting their fertile brains out to pasture at a pre-designated time.

I’m know I’m far from the first to question the concept of retirement as we know it, but for some reason it’s hitting me more as I head into my late 40s and work to shepherd others into satisfying career paths with an eye towards longevity. Is this the true test of whether or not we love what we do? Whether we want to retire from it or keep on? I think in many cases it is.

It is understandable that retirement seems like light at the end of the tunnel in situations like my father’s, where work involved long, odd hours and manual labor in all kinds of weather for Conrail. It was all about breadwinning, being the provider, and enduring it until he no longer had to for the good of the family.

But in crafting a life that doesn’t involve those circumstances or that mindset – certainly more prevalent in the last generation – retirement seems archaic. Perhaps the very best thing we can plan for in retirement is choice. Choice to play golf five days a week. Choice to still have the corner office overlooking Manhattan. Choice to work from home. Choice to lunch with the ladies. Choice to spend a few days working at the local library or hospital, to create art, to talk on the phone, to take classes, to travel. Choice to be meaningfully productive.

Otherwise I fear we run the risk of living our entire lives for that day when Social Security (hopefully) kicks in. But what have we done in the meantime to ensure that we get there whole? Jeopardized our health staying in jobs that run our blood pressure into the danger zone? Eaten processed food on the run until our cholesterol tops out to scary levels? Neglected spending time with loved ones because we had to have the swankier house and the extra car and the bigger retirement account? When the priority of the present is retirement, what are we saying about our current lives?

My 46-year-old self loves the idea that both of my streams of income, writing and life coaching, can be done on my terms until I’m good and ready to stop, if ever. But it’s also worth noting that some of my clients may want to stop working in their 60s or earlier and that we must be cognizant of that when we are setting goals to put them on a new career path. Only the individual can decide what that right balance is, but somewhere in there must be quality of life now.

Yes, by all means, fund the retirement account. Be smart about it. That’s a big factor in the aforementioned choice scenario. The rest is about attitude.

When somebody asks, “Are you ready for retirement?” the best possible answer might just be this:

It depends what you mean by that.

Nancy Colasurdo is a practicing life coach and freelance writer. Her Web site is www.nancola.com. Please direct all questions/comments to FOXGamePlan@gmail.com.