Midnight to Middle Age

I'm not quite a Doris Lessing fan, but she does write some exquisite passages. Here's something from her series Children of Violence I find particularly appealing:

"Money chimed through their talk like a regulator of a machine. For all the heavy insurances, the mortgages, hire-purchase, the servants were made possible because of their ingenuity with money...They were all perpetually short of ready money, because of their god, a secure and comfortable middle age. They sighed out, 'when we retire...' as if they were saying, 'When the prison gates are opened...' "

Perhaps it's a colonial hangover, but the British middle class, the civil servants, the cream of the colonials and the bourgeouis of the isle, seem to left their aspirations behind here. And we, the independent Indians, have lapped up those aspirations, and dotted our lives with milestones that will lead to a comfortable middle age and a secure retired life. Education, cars, land, houses, things we will work our entire life to finally be free of debt in our fifties. By which time, we will want to secure the lives of our children, and thanks to inflation, they will work for a comfortable middle age too!