Dear LPG,  

One thing that most pensioners have is time to think, and some find the activity depressing, perhaps because thinking often involves a lot of remembering times gone by. However, there are good memories to be considered too.  It can also be a human failing to remember the happy times and feel sadness while knowing that we cannot return to those happy times, which can also get us down a bit.  

Many of us indulge in this pastime when we are alone, but feeling solitary enough to find ourselves in a thinking mood can also happen in the middle of a large crowd of people.  I have found my mind wandering just because of a word or two that someone said while a group of us were talking, even though the conversation was still happening around me.  I am sure that I am not the only one because you can see when a person’s thinking muscle comes into play by just looking at the expressions on the faces of the friends around you.  

The affected member will get that far-away look in their eyes that many members of a group who are busy talking will miss because they are involved with the conversation. At the same time, the person who has dropped into nostalgia mode will be alone despite all the noise and activity happening around them. 

If that thought is trapped in your head, it will likely resurface when you are at home later, and dwelling on the negative aspect of such a thought is so easy.  Talking about such memories with the friends around you can make such a difference, and just having a friend offering a penny for them will often spark a conversation, bringing out the more positive aspects of such a memory.

I am pointing this out to friends in conversations because we should all ensure that even the quiet ones get to talk.  After all, when you get to our time of life, there is little we have not experienced.  One of the group will inevitably get thinking now and then, and that is when the others need to get them talking about what is on their minds.  When necessary, we need to remember inflation, think more about at least 50p and up the stakes by not just dismissing an initial decline to the invitation to share. 

RP, Catford