This is the latest in an occasional series of blog posts commenting on upcoming retirement.

I have been having a series of conversations lately with some young colleagues of mine at the auto dealership where — for now — I work part time.

They go something like this:

Me: I need to tell you that I’ve given notice and I am leaving.

Colleague: Really? Congratulations! What will you do?

Me: I’m retiring.

Colleague: Where will you go?

Me: I don’t know.

Colleague: That’s so cool. I am so happy for you. I cannot wait for the day when I can do that. It so far off.

Here is where I give these youngsters a tiny, good-natured but sincere lecture.

This is difficult to explain, but consider this to be one of those unsolvable mysteries of life.

You likely will not realize it in real time. You might not know it a week, month or even years from now. But before you know it — and you’ll know when it arrives — it will occur to you that it’s time to hang it up.

And when you make that decision, you’re going to look back over one or both of your shoulders and say, “What the hell happened? Where did the time go?”

That is my way of imparting to them a piece of wisdom my dear late mother gave to me: Do not wish your life away. Live your life one day at a time. Before you know it, you’ll be much farther down the road and you’ll realize that the time — your time — has arrived. You will have worked hard and you will know it is time to reap the reward.

It’s not worth the effort to seek a solution to this mystery.

I know one thing only: The time for my wife and me to get on down the road has just about arrived. No, we don’t know precisely where that road will take us. Members of our family have a pretty good general idea where we’ll end up. We will settle on a destination in due course.

Suffice to say, however, that our destination will involve our precious granddaughter.