How I Live

Retirement has made one truth clearer to me each morning: it’s easy to describe how I live, but far harder—and far more necessary—to remember why I live. The “how” is simple enough: income, meals, errands, the small logistics that fill a day. Leaving structured ministry only shifted the scenery. The routines remained, but the deeper question rises to the surface the moment I wake… why…

For years, my “why” was woven into the work—an open office door, being part of  counseling conversations that were the most important thing I did, focusing sermons that weren’t aimed at correcting others as much as to teach myself how to be human. Beneath all of it was a single purpose: to help people know their worth… that was the “why.”

I didn’t always succeed. Some voices still echo in my mind, making me wish I could ask for forgiveness or reconciliation. But many others remind me that the intention was real, and that, to them, the “why” mattered more than the “how.” They felt it.

Now, without the structure of ministry, the calling hasn’t changed. It has simply become quieter and more direct. I have chuckled a few times in my early morning walks that “This is how everybody else always lives all the time, Kohler. You were propped up inside ministry because it kept it in front of your face.” As I pass people, I hold up a hand, a small wave, while I pray a blessing on them. I’ll even do that to the red fox that scurries away into the rocks on the shore.

My purpose remains I find; it’s simply unfolding in a wider landscape. And it is still to create connection, to bear witness to God’s love in the ordinary moments—smiling at someone lost in their own thoughts, offering help, paying attention, choosing presence over convenience. And each evening I ask myself the same question: did I live the “why” today?

What I’m learning in retirement is something I fear we’re forgetting as a country. Too many of us have become experts in the “how”—how to protect ourselves, how to win, how to get ahead—while letting the “why” fade into the background. We claim to hold a purpose larger than ourselves, yet our actions often circle back to our own comfort, our own fears, our own tribes. It’s becoming increasingly necessary to remind those in power that the ‘why’ matters more than the ‘how.’ We need to ask our friends and neighbors to help us understand how they see things, because we hold that power together.

In all this then, I offer this simple reminder, born from my own stumbling attempts to live it out: we will not be remembered for how we managed our lives, but for whether we helped others remember their worth. The health of our nation will not be measured by how fiercely we guard our own interests, but by how deeply we choose to care for one another.

The “why” is still before us. And it is still the only thing that can hold us together.