More Than a Seat: The Unseen Cockpit of Later Years
He’s adjusting the lumbar support on his $1,573 Herman Miller, fine-tuning the tilt tension for another 8-hour stretch of ‘deep work.’ Across town, his father settles into a recliner from 1993, a lumpy, sagging relic, ready for a 10-hour day of ‘being.’
The Juxtaposition
Inadequately Supported Sitting Time
It’s a stark, almost absurd juxtaposition, isn’t it?
We pour thousands into the ergonomic perfection of our workspaces, investing in tools that promise to extend our productive prime, to extract every last ounce of efficiency from our working years. We scrutinize mattress reviews for hours, demanding perfect spinal alignment for our 8 hours of sleep. And rightly so. But when it comes to the piece of furniture where many retired individuals spend the vast majority of their waking existence – perhaps 10, even 13 hours a day – we often demonstrate a profound, bewildering apathy. It’s not just a blind spot; it’s a gaping, cultural chasm.
Personal Blind Spots and Societal Narratives
I’ve been guilty of it myself. For years, I just saw a chair as a chair. A place to sit. A piece of furniture, nothing more. My own grandfather’s old armchair, worn thin in patches, always seemed like a characterful part of the living room, a monument to his long life. I never stopped to think about what it felt like to be *in* that monument for hours on end, day after day, year after year. That was a
