Sweet Justice
One of the benefits of growing older according to Selma is that if you live long enough – and your own life has been exemplary – you are going to experience the sweet justice or schadenfreude of seeing the undoing of all of your enemies or those that have caused you pain.
“You know the type,” laughs Selma. “The classroom bullies who push their way through life and inevitably end up in positions of power. Or the quiet, cunning types; or the brash types who believe that a sucker is born every minute (and no sucker deserves an even break); or the mad ones like my ex-mother-in law.”
“I have a very close knit circle of friends these days – and trusted professionals, too – so I don’t get to meet any new people,” says Selma. “And that’s a blessing because the more people you come into contact with the more likely you are to get hurt, and the odds are stacked against older people, especially older women, who seem to be the target of everyone’s rage these days.”
“In that respect, being retired from work and the madding crowd is a decided advantage – as is having no children or grandchildren dumping their problems onto me,” explains Selma. “I retired at 55 and could have kept on working for another ten years or more but it just wasn’t worth it. I owned my own home and had a comfortable retirement income – all earned without hurting anybody or inheriting anything – so why would I want more?”
“There’s really nobody of any importance left who needs ‘sweet justice’ for whatever bad thing they did to me,” laughs Selma. “I’ve lived long enough already to see the undoing of all of my enemies, torturers and pain-givers.”
“Now, isn’t that a wonderful benefit of growing older?”
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