Dear LPG,

I have come to the conclusion that I have spent a lifetime working out how to blend into the background of our society without ever really getting noticed.  I think that perhaps our generation learnt this from our parents.  They are the role models that capture our imaginations when we are young and my parents, like many just after the war, had the attitude that studying hard and keeping your head down was the best way forward.  As a result, it was really easy to be a part of the background and forget just how unique each and every one of us is.

Children can be quite cruel to each other, and the best way of avoiding the risk of becoming the object of that cruelty is to not put yourself in the position where you become the target of one of the few really popular kids that does not conform but with positive results.

I cannot help but look at my school aged grandchildren and see a generation that have hardly any inhibitions when it comes to exercising their rights to individuality and, while I question the less disciplined way that youngsters are brought up these days, I can see that they are more likely to be extroverted and less worried about what everybody else thinks of their behaviour when it comes to being ready to stand out because of it.

There are many ways of standing out and being a bit different.  One way is being brainier than the average person around you.  When you are really young that means getting better marks than most or being a particularly talented artist, sports person or musician, but we all can’t be that.  And even always being better at something than others can often be thought of as a reason to be shunned. 

Then there is the world of work, marriage and children where whatever you planned to do often goes straight out of the window because just managing to get through all that takes up your whole life for a while.

I think that being different is something that so many of us wish to be without having the confidence to carry it through and, even in my retirement, I am reluctant to go for it. 

I know that what I have described is felt by a lot of older people who will look back and still experience those feelings of regret about some of the smallest things that they could have done but never had the courage to carry through at the time for fear of getting it wrong; and now, having retired they feel that it is all too late.

The fact is that it is never too late and if there is something that you ever wanted to do, now might be the time to get started. 

I think that lockdown has given us all too much time to think and part of that process has been to evaluate our lives and find ourselves with some talent which we have always wanted to exploit a little more than we have done in the past. 

As we get back to something close to normality, now might be the time to take it on or go some way to realising such a goal regardless of what others think.

I think that I wrote this down for two reasons. The first is that I can’t help but believe that there are many people of retirement age who have the same thoughts lying dormant somewhere deep in the back of their minds. 

The second is that I am really good at preaching to my close friends on this subject but I feel that a lot more people might just benefit from hearing my message.

My plea is, please do something about it; it is never too late…

TP, Sydenham