15. 10. 2022
Wherever we read or listen as we do, from mature to overripe, we must always be “in”, alert, in motion, in action, so that our brains don’t shrink and our joints don’t creak. Here they admire a seventy-year-old grandmother on roller skates, there they applaud an eighty-year-old with a tennis racket or a couple of almost a hundred years old on the dance floor. We do not hear of us, inactive retirees. Well, we are perceived as something out of fashion, asocial, inappropriate. Like the scum of society.
I have been working honestly for almost half a century and was looking forward to enjoying my retirement. And I did pretty well. I slept in the morning, cooked in the morning, rested after lunch, played chess in the afternoon and went out for a beer a few nights. But lately my friends have also succumbed to that active fury. One goes to yoga with his wife, the other crosses the village with walking sticks, the third learns to squeeze the most out of his smartphone during classes. And still “they don’t have time”.
“Mr. Vácho, come to our senior club sometime,” said Ms. Jeřábková, whom I met at the post office. “We always have activities, you are sure to choose something. You should not side with the collective. Being active in old age is also important for the psyche …”
God, what does that woman know about my psyche, I thought. I can no longer hear the “active senior” connection. I feel like an outcast, like something that doesn’t belong to today’s society. I do not envy the “activists”, nor do I laugh at them. Let them do what they love and what is enough for them. It just seems to me that there has been a little too much “you must be active or you are stunted” lately.
I am satisfied with what I have and what I (don’t) do. I am different. So?!
