I am an alien to young people. To them I could possibly be a lizard species from a parallel universe. I have two legs, two arms and one head, but I do not look human – I do not look like them. I have grey hair and wrinkles. I move too slow. I don’t live in a virtual world with an electronic device permanently attached to my hand.
Among
themselves, young people see themselves as brilliant and far superior to the senile old. They are the discoverers of sex, they are masters of the automobile, they
are celebrities in their virtual world, they can solve all the world’s problems
with a sound bite and a mike drop; while we, the lizard people, eat oat meal,
wear depends, and walk around in a mental fog and constantly in their way.
I look at the young with forbearance. What they extol as their trailblazing experiences we have done a hundred times over; and the depth and breadth of our experiences are beyond their comprehension. We are the keepers of the past, of the knowledge, and they are the explorers of the future.
We are as unalike as alien species.
Yes, that's true -- but when WE were young, didn't we look at old people the same way? Yes, we did. It's just the Circle of Life.
ReplyDeleteThey sound like we did 60 years ago
ReplyDeleteSadly true. But it seems to happen every generation. It is just hard being on the receiving end of the dismissals.
ReplyDeletePipeTobacco