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BS ‘n’ About…
Our Elders
The label “Senior Citizen” sounds so over-there-and-out-of-the-way, like the return address from some trailer park in Florida. It rolls off the tongue condescendingly yet politically correct, much like “comrade” does in communist countries. It defines our parents and grandparents as a minority within the whole, somehow outside the flow of things.
Not That Long Ago we used the term “Elder”. It defined those who raised us in relation to the flow of things, inferring an air of respect and wisdom, inferring a position at or near the top in the hierarchy of things. It implies that their years give them a wisdom that youth can’t see, a wisdom youth would be wise to consult.
America is one long lifetime removed from outhouses, candlelight, and horseshit. Anyone with an AARP card can remember the days when we didn’t have all that much STUFF, very little of it was DISPOSABLE, and our lives didn’t revolve around the TV. Childhood consisted of one of each kind of ball, a couple boardgames, a GI Joe or Barbie, a pair of Keds, and lots and lots of friends.
The very essence of human life has changed more in the past fifty years than in the three thousand before it. Thus it is easy to assume that life has passed our Elders by, that their horse-and-buggy wisdom has no value in our semiconductor of a world. So we label them Senior Citizens and hide them away in nursing homes, retirement communities, and senior centers. We are making our Elders irrelevant.
Since earliest man, it was the Elders who passed along the knowledge and wisdom of our species to the young. Much of what was passed along was intangible, a peaceful acceptance of existence that youth can’t see and only age knows. Have we advanced to the point where we no longer need this passing of the torch, or will this break from the old ways be our downfall?
As one ages, his perspective changes. As eras come and go, the bigger picture becomes clearer, a harmony of action and reaction replacing the chaotic, experience-starved growth spurts of our youth. But the price Age pays for this perspective is a heavy one. Leaps of faith become harder to make, recovery times keep getting longer, and long-term investments don’t hold the same allure. The energy and idealism is no longer there. But the wisdom now is.
As we march into the 21st Century, we are in danger of losing touch with our simpler, communal past. …losing touch with the very building blocks upon which we have always based human society. Our Elders may very well be the last generation to live as humans always have: raised on family, faith, and community, tied to profession, tied to the Earth, and bonded with the neighbors.
This is probably not a good thing. Humanity can’t afford to lose touch with the communal building blocks which have brought us so far. We sit astride two great eras. Our parents used Yankee Ingenuity, honest family values, and the Good Ole American Work Ethic to build the industrial powerhouse which makes us strong today. Our children will be born to master the technologies we’ve created for them. The only question is how much of their humanity will remain once they’re plugged into all that technology.
We, the middle generation, those whose childhoods still reflect those simpler times, need to re-learn from our Elders the work ethic, inner strength, and peace with which we were raised. Our parents had it. Our children don’t. We need to turn our Senior Citizens back into Elders and bring them back into the process. Quickly. Before it is too late.
Already our kids have no concept of that simpler, people-intensive world our Elders represent, the world of our ancestors. We are a generation away from making a clean break with our past. Is this a good thing? Is this a bad thing? Shouldn’t it be the kind of thing done as part of some plan? Do we even see it coming? The fact that our Elders seem so irrelevant is probably more a reflection on us than on them. The chasm that separates us is filled with our ignorance, not theirs.
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