The Real Joy Of Aging
As my Mother is constantly telling people who try to tell her she can’t say something – “I’m an old lady, what are they going to do?”
Doris Lessing [no, not Paul Krugman’s cat, the real one] is the 88-year-old British writer who just won the Nobel for literature and isn’t very impressed. Jams has the more formal BBC interview, while August has her instant response when told by the reporters waiting for her on her front stoop.
If she decides to give a Nobel lecture, I would expect her to say whatever she thinks.
4 comments
I intend to be an absolutely HORRIBLE old man. Hooray for Ms. Lessing!
We spend too much time being “nice” to people we can’t stand while working, so it is definitely “no more mister nice guy” after retirement.
Well, I must admit that I don’t have to deal with people I can’t stand at work (I have an absolute veto on new hires in the engineering department and if I run into a jerk he is out of there, and my manager runs interference with the field people), but, on the other hand, I can’t speak as freely as I’d like either because I don’t want to turn myself into one of those “people you can’t stand” in the eyes of co-workers that I need to get along with in order to get my job done. Being diplomatic is pretty much part of the job description once you get past individual contributor status, sigh… which is why my undiplomatic rantings make it onto the blogosphere under my penguin persona.
But once I make my billion dollars in the next Google IPO (hah!)…
Try working on the customer service side. You can’t say that the problem is that the user is too stupid to breath without a reminder. It will definitely be nice not to be nice.
The promotion to management was one of the reason I went into consulting. Having to intervene in personal squabbles among the people working for me was wearing me out and I don’t don’t ever want to deal with another married couple who work together.
Being independently wealthy would probably help, but then you would have to deal with your staff. It’s always something.