Retirement – Hardly boring

For highly rated but recently retired Auckland columnist Steve Braunias, the Gold Card is “the bouncer at the doorway of a dark, quiet and possibly boring club exclusively reserved for older people”.

My friend Fred, once a fan of Steve’s, thinks he should be stripped of his club membership for such misrepresentation. Doesn’t he know we are the luckiest generation ever, enjoying life with government-funded retirement, after enjoying the best years of the welfare state, affordable housing and health care.

Some of us got almost free tertiary education and we didn’t have to go to war.

Perhaps we don’t all smile as often as the retirement village ads suggest we should, but at least those ads remind us we can now do all the things we never had time for during our working years. There’s an awful lot of walking and fishing, bowling, art classing and tai chi-ing going on.

Hardly boring, the Gold Card Club is what you make it, and a lot less boring than working long hours, sitting in traffic queues and trying to please bosses who never gave you the credit you deserved.

Mr Braunius needs to know that the biggest, perhaps only obligation of Gold Card membership is gratitude, and determination to stay positive, whatever the ailments that go with getting older.

Fred, drama queen that he is, loves to quote the Ukrainian proverb: “Don’t fall down until you’re shot.”
We can’t do much for the country’s GDP but we can influence hugely the mood of the nation by digging out the good news stories, however small and local they might be.

The NZ Herald, who has just unemployed Mr Braunius, writes headlines usually favouring the sad, bad and mad. Now they’re promising a change of heart, highlighting stories of inspiration, success, courage and possibility.

I hope the Herald will consult with the Gold Card Club for material. Mr Braunius could add some of his own as he gets older and his cynicism mellows.

I’d like to tell him some of my own, especially about the partners and carers of people living with degenerative conditions like dementia who are determined to retain as much of a normal routine as possible for those in their constant care, who remain cheerful and celebrate small successes as major victories. Their courage and spirit leave me in awe. Their names don’t appear on the New Year’s Honours list but a gong would underrate what they teach us about being human.

What I admire most about these carers I know is their optimism, even as they grapple with declining health and end-of-life challenges. They see the glass over half full long after it looks empty to me. For them the Gold Card Club is not a final waiting room, quiet, dark and boring; but a busy, well-lit station on a journey that can still provide surprise and delight.