Respect Elders

They have lived for longer than we have and are wise in the ways of the world. They have gone through the university of life and are graduates in the path that we are just staring on. For this reason alone, elders deserve our respect. If they are our relatives, all the more they deserve every consideration. It is obvious that we would not be where we are today if our parent and grandparents did not see it fit to make sacrifices so that we would have the good life that we have today.
It may be that we are more educated than the elders are, academically, but they do have one area of expertise which will take us many years to catch up with and that is practical experience. Can we know more than they do through academic learning? Well, for one thing they have lived history. Learned men have always told us that real learning is learning through experience. For example, anyone listening to an old man recounting his experience during the Japanese Occupation would have noticed the passion in his voice as he talks about the friends he lost and the pains he felt. Quite often tears spring in the eyes of people who tell us their experiences during those difficult times. There is just no way that the reality of their feelings can be well recorded in any history book.
If we look at the learning of the world in the areas of tradition, culture, rites, rituals, courtesies, customs and other beautiful aspects of the human race, we see that many of them have been transmitted through generations through the elders. It is through them that we know many of these and not   from books. Without elders, we have to reinvent them with the passing of each generation.
It is my opinion that we do not respect elders just because they are elders. Rather we feel that we are greatly indebted to them and respect them because of the debt that we owe them. One more thing is that in time we will also be elders. If we want our youths to respect us, then we must show them how – by respecting elders...