the common saying…when you start to compare and criticize
youngsters, you are just getting old. One will always start their
conversations with ‘during my time, I used to do this or that
abcbullshit123scissorspaperstone…etc’ or ‘kids today are so
pampaered, comfortable, lazy, blahablah…’ For one thing, we all
know that there are going to be a larger greying population due to
the low birth rates. But try to stop the critical comparisons and
beware of this trap~! Change your mindset as this have indirect
implications on your current and future lifestyles. The world is
moving at breakneck speed and with so much information overload and
opportunities, they grow up faster, smarter and more effective. So,
if you start using ‘age’ and ‘experience’ as a defense mechanism
against the supposed threats that these youngsters will one day
overpower you, leaving you like a discared furniture and taking
away all your entitlements, you are just making it happen sooner
than later. We often equate an old person as someone who is
experienced, worldy wise, and very much like a great thinker who
grows a long white beard. They should enjoy better treatment and
respect in all and every situations and seniority based wage system
are a given entitlement. Well, that was in the last century. While
asian societies place an emphasis on the respect on their elders,
such practices are slowly breaking down because of many
inefficiencies. And one may just be perpetuating the myth that
commands that ‘i am older than you, you must listen to me though if
I am wrong or not your father’. same thing happens in politics,
work and in your family life. But as the young get smarter, they
will be even faster to rebel and work around the system, and very
often creating more problems and harm to feeble old folks that
refuse to budge. Hence, instead of putting them in one mould,
generalizing or whatever, learn and share. Even if it results in
constructive chaos, exchange ideas…very soon, they could be like
you and you be like them. By that, I dont’ mean getting a 60 year
old to dress in mini-skirts, but whats stopping her? Think of it as
some re-education programme like what the communists did during the
60s-70s but you are doing it willingly and by yourself. The income
gap is already growing wider, more unemployment confirmed, and we
do not need some other stratifications based on age, gender or
cosmopolitan/heartland ‘class’ status. These may seem trivial or
just some cheeky taunt, but not everyone takes it that way and it
is here where peanut issues pass through people and processes to
become big negative issues. So, in this day where one liztens more
and speak less, learn and relearn, throw away that condescension,
stop such bad habits if one wishes to survie the 21st century.
