CHAPTER 1: Rebel With a Clue

By a woman of a certain age who’s done with taking herself, or the world, too seriously.

There comes a time somewhere after the last paycheck, before the next ache, somewhere in the liminal hush of retirement, when you realise: 

They never knew what they were doing either.

It doesn’t arrive with fanfare or enlightenment music. It just sort of clicks, usually while you’re pouring tea or wondering why your retirement planner looks more chaotic than you. And the thought lands, feather-light but thunderous:

The ones in charge. The ones who wrote the rules. The ones who told us how to behave, what to value, what success looked like. All of it:  the neat boxes, the systems, the status, the endless productivity disguised as purpose.

It’s all a bit... made up, isn’t it?

It’s all a bit... much, isn’t it?

So now, finally, deliciously, rebelliously, we are free.

Not free in the "discount cruises and early morning swims" kind of way. Free in the real sense. Free to disrupt. To delight. To question. To stir the pot. To get inconveniently curious. Free to say, “No thanks, I’ve done the hamster wheel. I’m walking now.
Barefoot. Braless. Brave.

I want to live like I’m six again. Mischievous. Loud. Wildly observant. Disobedient in all the right ways. I want to tug at the threads of society’s sweater until the whole illusion unravels into something warmer, something shared. I want to grate at the edges of things not out of bitterness, but out of possibility. Because honestly? Life is not meant to be a prison in pantyhose. It should feel more like a picnic. With ants, yes but also laughter and leftovers and grass-stained knees.

We, the elders (the newly wild and wonderfully ungovernable) have something more powerful than influence. We have nothing left to prove. And from that place, we can speak with real freedom. And from that gorgeous, pressure-free, IDGAF space, we can start saying the things that actually matter. Not from a stage or a TED Talk. From our stoeps. Our garden chairs. Our folding tables at the Saturday market.

We can model the kind of wisdom that doesn’t preach, the kind that doesn't need applause or a PowerPoint to drive the message home, but the kind you pass along in stories while your hands smell like lemon and feta. Whispers that are shared from porches and community fetes and farmer’s markets. The kind that helps build something different ...slower, saner, more soulful... one tea break and homegrown tomatoes and chillies and coriander at a time.

So let’s meander. Let’s barter. Let’s share figs and loquats from the backyard tree, and stories from the real world. Let’s brew our own kombucha, make organic skincare and eco-friendly detergents, and pass around recipes like secrets. Let’s make our neighbourhoods feel like villages again, not through petitions or policy, but through presence, through being known and tied-in. A chair outside. A loaf shared. A “bring what you have, take what you need” box on the corner. Let’s sweep our stoeps and call out to the neighbourhood kids a playful scolding when they’re up to no good, so they know we’re watching, so they know they’re safe. Let them play freely again, in streets where their families are known, until the lights flicker on. Let’s love people more than money, homemade food more than fancy pre-packaged meals, community more than convenience. Let’s eat what’s local and call it a revolution. Let’s swap our way through the week and call it an economy. Let’s grow things just to give them away. Let’s host potlucks that turn into stokvels and conversations that lead to small, persistent uprisings of joy.

And if anyone asks what we’re doing, we’ll just smile and say, “Just playing.” Because play is how we learn. It’s how we soften. It’s how we shift, not with rigidity and rules, but with levity and laughter.

We are not here to take over. We are here to gently, stubbornly, lovingly tip the world off balance. Just enough so the young ones can catch the pieces and make something new.

And when they do, when the community starts to outweigh the corporation, when the garden reclaims the sidewalk, when people grow fruits and veggies instead of lawns, when people greet each other like kin instead of competition, then, maybe, we’ll rest.

Not because we’ve given up. But because we’ve handed it on.

With a wink. And a full belly that jiggles when we laugh.