Rehearsals for a Comback
One of my favorite songs is Phil Ochs’ Rehearsals for Retirement.
It’s not just a song—it’s a slow, bitter funeral march, not for a person, but for a whole way of seeing the world. Ochs sings like a man who has already written his own obituary, and in a way, he had. He wasn’t just mourning himself—he was mourning the death of idealism, the end of an era that promised so much but delivered so little.
I first listened to it while rehearsing for my own retirement. Somewhere east of Suez, I stepped away from everything—work, responsibility, expectations. It wasn’t exactly an escape, more like an intermission, a break from the weight of things. Ochs’ voice followed me, whispering in the background:
“I’ve given everything I had to give, and now I’ll turn and go away.”
I understood that feeling. The sense that you fight, you give, you believe—and then, at some point, you realize the world doesn’t care. You see the same mistakes being made again and again, the same illusions being repackaged, the same betrayals, the same compromises. The same dream, shattered in a new decade.
It was easy to see why Ochs gave up.
Ochs’ mistake wasn’t in seeing the failure—he was right about that. The movements of the 60s didn’t bring the revolution they promised. The assassinations, the corruption, the compromises—everything he had fought for fell apart in front of his eyes. That kind of disillusionment kills people, not just in the literal sense, but in the way it hollows them out, leaves them walking ghosts of their former selves.
But here’s the thing:
Disillusionment is not the end. It’s a crossroads.
You can do what Ochs did—accept that the world is broken, that hope was foolish, and start rehearsing for your own retirement. Or you can take that disillusionment and use it.
Because the truth is, the world doesn’t care if you give up. Ochs left, and history moved on. The system he despised kept running. The same cycles of hope, corruption, resistance, and collapse repeated, because they always do. His pain didn’t stop anything.
That’s the real trap—thinking that because the world has failed you, there’s no reason to continue.
The Darkest Hour is Not Before the Dawn—Unless You Make It So
There’s an old saying: “The darkest hour is just before the dawn.” It’s comforting, but it’s also false. There’s no guarantee of dawn. No rule that says things will naturally get better if you just hold on.
The real truth is this:
The darkest hour is just before the dawn—if someone lights the fire.
If you just sit in the dark, waiting, you might die there. History doesn’t fix itself. The world doesn’t magically get better. The things Ochs fought for still matter—but he didn’t stick around to see what came next. He didn’t give himself the chance to adapt, to find a new way forward, to step out of his despair and build something new.
And that’s why his song is a warning, not a prophecy.
We’re living in another age of exhaustion, cynicism, and burnout. People are tired, angry, drowning in contradictions, watching history repeat itself with a different aesthetic. The cycle of illusion and disillusionment is turning again, and just like in Ochs’ time, people are wondering:
What’s the point?
But here’s the thing—there is no final battle. No moment where everything is won or lost. History is just waves breaking on the shore, again and again. If one dream collapses, it doesn’t mean the end. It means you build another.
Ochs sang his own funeral, but we don’t have to. Disillusionment is not the end—it’s just the moment before reinvention.
The world will disappoint you. Fine. Disappointment is proof you still believe in something.
So take the lesson, but rewrite the ending. The fire doesn’t light itself.