Africa-Press – Mauritius. Decades ago, we were yearning for the time when we would leave university for good to start working and enjoying adult life. We became so engrossed in that second phase that we failed to notice that it had already come to a close. It’s retirement time!
Many of us are haunted by the prospect of having to spend the rest of our years in a retirement home. While others will continue embellishing their home life – washing, painting, cleaning, gardening– and live happily.
But to many who had looked upon home as a place just to be near the family and wile away the time the dilemma remains: how to structure one’s time away from one’s profession?
The Dilemma
Do we spin a new outlook on life, or do we fall into the mindset of most senior citizens and sink into inevitable melancholy? Would we inevitably sink into reminiscences of times past – contemplating what might have been, punctuated by regrets? Or do we reactivate old pastimes and hobbies that our profession had eroded into — much to our chagrin? Oh, those books! – those old memorable stories that we had read repeatedly with dreamy eyes – ‘Les Trois Mousquetaires’ or ‘Le Comte de Monte Cristo’ or the idyllic world of PG Wodehouse and his characters like Bertie Wooster; can we rekindle similar enthusiasm for new books that could fire our adventurous mind once again, as before? Or should we revisit all those opening moves, gambits, and traps in those unforgettable 1972 chess games between Fischer and Spassky?
But what’s the worry? Are we not supposed to be free now? No work! No responsibility outside home. No question of being on time. That’s freedom, isn’t it? Free of bosses, of punctuality or of heavy professional responsibility?
Years of harassment
So how about doing what we always wanted to do? Remember those student days – when going to school was such a daily harassment, when taking extra tuition was a further burden on our young mind.
Our parents saw to it that we toed their line – that we get up early at 6 am, eat the oatmeal prepared by mother, read books before going to class; we sorely missed the early morning comfortable bed.
Come weekend – how we had run away to play football or to catch birds with our friends. But we always had the feeling that that parental gaze was lurking behind every bush.
Now that we are free at last, why not go on sleeping for as long as we want? Why not do whatever or as much as one wants – taking a late breakfast, walking to town leisurely.
knowing that there won’t be any revision work to do, no books to open, no long-faced teacher breathing down our necks to extract conjugation of French verbs from us! Wonder of wonders! There won’t be examination times which drained us of our mental energy and peace, robbing us of our childhood bonhomie.
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