Nobody Needs My Opinion, Which Is Annoying Because I've Still Got Several

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The Old Grey Thinker article image

One of the quieter discoveries of retirement is that your opinions do not retire with you.

They remain disgracefully active.

Mine still get up early. They peer through the curtains. They make remarks about roadworks, packaging, chair design, public signage, and the moral decline implied by a badly laid out supermarket aisle.

The difference is that nobody has scheduled a meeting to receive them.

For years, my judgement had somewhere to go. Not always somewhere welcoming. Sometimes a room would ask for my view and then punish me gently for having one. But there was a structure. Someone would say, "What do you think?" and I would perform the ancient male ritual of pretending to consider carefully what I had already decided.

Then work ends.

The machinery stops.

And there you are, still full of views, with no official outlet except muttering at the news and developing uncharitable thoughts about self-checkouts.

There is comedy in this. There has to be. Without comedy, a retired man with several unused opinions becomes a small regional hazard by Thursday.

But beneath it is a quieter thing. Being asked for your opinion is not only about ego. It means your experience has not been placed in storage. It means someone thinks your judgement may still alter the outcome.

When the asking stops, you discover how much of adulthood was made of being consulted.

The full piece is on The Old Grey Thinker:

https://theoldgreythinker.substack.com/p/nobody-needs-my-opinion-which-is

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