510. The Remedy For Grumpiness

510.   The Remedy For Grumpiness

In entry 507 I described the Cassandra effect.   It is the experience of mostly women, who are aware of something going wrong in their relationship, and who suffer, because they are not taken for serious and they are powerless to prevent the catastrophe.

Grumpy old people are the counterpart of Cassandra in their concern about the development of society.  The grumpy old men are more visible, because of their more aggressive and angry way of expressing their grumpiness.  There are also grumpy old women, but they tend to be more silent about it. 

The grumpiness of sane people is different from dementia. Being a nuisance or not is a question of mental health and of self-control, it is not a question of age.   

This entry is about sane grumpy old people with comprehensible reasons to be grumpy.

Grumpy old people are much more alive and healthy than are docile old people.    Feeling grumpy is an indication of the awareness, that something is not as it should be.   Grumpiness is the logical, reasonable and comprehensible reaction to perceived real grievances.  

Grumpy old people are those, who

• have lived a long time and have observed and experienced the changes of society with open eyes.  
  They have grown mature.   They have gained the wisdom to evaluate, what has improved and what has deteriorated.   
• have self-confidence and independence in their thinking.  
  They recognize grievances.  They are critical and outspoken.  They reject detrimental social norms.    They are not easily gullible to manipulations.
   

Blaming people as if being grumpy were a defect is a misconception, which does not lead to a solution.  Those who do the blaming are usually immature youngsters.  Old people cannot change a society dominated by those, who are younger and less mature.   They need a way to live in this situation without suffering.

Being lonely, especially being intellectually lonely is a sufficient and logical reason to become grumpy.   I have mentioned intellectual loneliness before.    An apistic and skeptic can feel intellectually very lonely between religious people.   

But a person, who sees the world with over six decades of life experience can feel intellectually lonely too in a society, where the influential power of the media and the political power over life are all dominated by people, who are much younger.

Only the removal of the reasons for being grumpy is a rational remedy.  It is a huge emotional relief to be able to share the own world view and the agreement about what is going wrong with likeminded people.   

The best remedy is the emotional safe haven of a bonded relationship with someone in the same age group sharing the same attitudes and the same world view.  

A happy person has no reasons to be grumpy, and a grumpy person lacks happiness.

Therefore I am willing to accept a grumpy old man as a potential partner.   If he is my mindmate, he will not remain grumpy.   Knowing me will end his grumpiness.