Dear LPG,

I found the quotation that I have asked LPG to add to the bottom of this message while browsing the internet the other day and it got me thinking about what total freedom really is.  I think that, in theory, we are pretty lucky in as much as we pensioners are perhaps the people who are experiencing the nearest thing to freedom that it will ever be possible to understand during our lifetimes. 

But I got to thinking about what freedom really means…

We don’t have to get up and go to work every weekday morning, many of us don’t have to pay rent or a mortgage any more, we can go where we want and do more or less what we want with our time, we can pursue whatever hobbies we want or be as lazy as we want, we can eat what we want, be as tidy or as untidy as we want, keep what we want, be round the friends that we want and avoid those that we don’t want more, than any other age group that live around us. 

Well that is how it is supposed to be when you just retire; provided that you don’t have to:

• attend endless hospital appointments;
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• you don’t start your retirement with financial difficulties;
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• you are mobile enough to get out and about independently and have the stamina for all that free travel our passes allow us;
•  
• we don’t find ourselves with so much time that we end up sitting and thinking more than is good for us;
•  
• we find a hobby or pursuit that interests us enough to make us continue to pursue it;
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• we do not find ourselves with a diet restricting illness or false teeth that make enjoying and negotiating our favourite food impossible;
•  
• we don’t feel the need to keep everything and get ourselves labelled a hoarder; and
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• we don’t lose touch with our friends and find ourselves very alone in this world all of a sudden.  

I have often heard my 50-something-year-old children tell me that we, their parents, have never had it so good and that they cannot wait to be able to put work behind them to which I say ‘be careful what you wish for…’.  I am not trying to spread doom and gloom here but I have come to the conclusion that there are really two sides to every coin…

LY, Blackheath

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