Since humans chose a sedentary lifestyle, we learned to depend on natural cycles and to store provisions for winter, when the land ceases its production. That necessity faced two constant enemies: the climate and pests. Soon, man discovered his two best allies: the subsoil—where a grotto several meters deep maintains a stable temperature throughout the year—and the pantry, that dark, well-ventilated room.
How can one forget the wine and fruit kept in the family grotto, cool in summer and warm in winter?
Many families in La Paz, during the more than fifty days of the recent rural siege, have rediscovered the importance of the pantry; a space that half a century ago was the heart of homes, but today has been reduced to built-in cupboards or a refrigerator that is periodically restocked after “going to the market.”
The pantry has evolved, yet it maintains its essence as a survival tool. Its name comes from the ancient French “paneterie” a room for storing bread, analogous to the Latin “dispensare” (to administer, to distribute), a root it shares with the “dispensary” of a health center. Likewise, the canonical “dispensation” exempts one from a rule, and the “indispensable” is that without which we cannot do.
As often happens, the concept has moved to other spheres as an allegory of memory and culture: a “storehouse” of knowledge to which the narrator turns to nourish themselves with timeless wisdom. Even in political and academic language, the prefix “neo-” (neoclassicism, neoliberalism, neocolonialism) functions as a way to refill that intellectual pantry with new labels.
In the course of this reflection, I have found an eloquent analogy: if the physical pantry ensured survival in times of scarcity, today retirement fulfills that same function in the face of the “winter” of existence.
Life follows an agricultural cycle: in spring, we sow through study and work; in summer, we harvest the fruits of our effort; in autumn, we save what we do not consume; and in winter, we enjoy those savings through an income that allows us to subsist. If we define the pantry not as a piece of furniture, but as a system of storing resources for the future, retirement is, in essence, our “financial pantry.” Some, as seen in controversial cases, have interpreted this storage in a distorted way, turning influence peddling into a personal pantry of illicit wealth, as we are seeing in the investigation of a former prime minister of Spain.
In this new modality, we have moved from storing tangible goods—jewelry, land, livestock—to guarding financial assets. However, this modern pantry is not free from the plagues that erode security. The first is the uncertainty of the “expiration date”: in a traditional pantry, we know when the grain will spoil; in retirement, we ignore how long our life will last, facing the so-called “longevity risk.” The second is inflation: a sack of wheat remains a sack of wheat, but the purchasing power of money can “rot” due to rising prices or the “flexibility” of the exchange rate.
Faced with this existential insecurity, which no human cupboard can fully overcome, it is pertinent to remember that there are deeper securities. In this regard, the evangelical counsel takes on renewed validity: “Provide yourselves with ‘pantries’ in heaven that do not grow old, a treasure in heaven that does not fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Luke 12:33-34).
In the end, perhaps our most important pantry is the one we manage to fill with that which never perishes.