Do you find you get respect as an older person? Or do you get the opposite? And what do you think about respect (or the lack of) towards people who've had experience and conquered adversity? At some level I believe we need to be treated with the same respect as Service Members, who always expect you to say "thank you for your service." What about someone saying to us "thank you for working hard, creating businesses, jobs and children."
Sure. But unfortunately with the advent of books, video, and the net old people can't command the same respect as they did before those things were invented. Before only old people knew what had gone before and could relate it to the younger generation. They were the repository of knowledge and wisdom, now it's Google.
Some respect their elders, some don't. Eventually they'll find peace with the fact that the world existed before they came along, we were there and we learned from our mistakes, our failures and our successes. It's called experience, not "being set in our ways".
I am always amazed at the number of people who "thank me for my service." My ball cap says "Navy Veteran." I spent eight years in the Navy Reserve during the Korean Conflict. We were called up the last two weeks of the war, then told to forget it. I did see a lot of different countries and do a lot of training. It was a good experience for me, I was a Radarman. There were even times I thought my life was over, as in the middle of Hurricane Audrey. I believe I get respect as an older person (83), most people are helpful.
Do you find you get respect as an older person? sometimes, and it almost always surprises me. Or do you get the opposite? that happens too. everyone has their own perspectives And what do you think about respect (or the lack of) towards people who've had experience and conquered adversity? i don't think special favors are whats important. taking everything into logical consideration is what is, is what ads up to how we treat the world and how we make it for each other to experience by doing so. At some level I believe we need to be treated with the same respect as Service Members, who always expect you to say "thank you for your service." really i have a lot of problems with this word "respect". no person, place or thing, deserves to be disconsidered, nor the nature of their current behavior as well as what they may have done for others in their past. What about someone saying to us "thank you for working hard, creating businesses, jobs and children." well my first thought is 'what have they been smoking'. though i would never want to voice it out loud. i've spent most of my life avoiding causing harm, and live without a lot of the outward signs others would expect in order to. i don't ask for medals for that. it does feel nice to be recognized as a person, but it also, i don't feel any different inside then i did when i was 12 years old. i do try to keep myself as clean and inconspicuous while expressing my personal taste in aesthetics at the same time. this gets to be more of a challange as we age as perceptions in the popular culture continue to change and evolve, which at some point, they begin doing so faster then we can keep up with if we wanted to. all it takes to get old is to live long enough. to gain wisdom, we also need to pay attention to how we observe how things actually work, and not just how we let ourselves come to expect them to. most of what any one of us thinks, young or old, and whatever its source, is less then totally accurate. there are no absolute guideposts, only that somethings happen more often then others and this can be observed. considration, is what i hope most people mean by respect, how widely it is practiced, how much logic is employed in the service of it, really makes the difference between utopia and tyranny, and its a statistical sum that each of us chooses our own data point and thus how they add together to make what we all create that each of us experiences. two equally big mistakes, to put it all on someone else, but equally big, to take it all on ourselves.
I was taught to respect my elders, hold doors, Yes ma-am, Yes sir etc. I watched one afternoon at a street light as a older woman started walking across the street, she was slow moving and not going to make it. Just as the light turned green a impatient man beeps the horn, next to him was a man on a motorcycle, the biker put his kickstand down got off his bike and walked the woman arm in arm to the sidewalk. The biker walked back to his motorcycle slowly pulling away, only then did the other vehicles start to move. Respect is something very lacking in the world today.
Sure. I respect my elders and everyone else. But the second you disrespect me. It's on. I don't take crap from people and I don't bow down either.
I helped an elderly over the weekend. Poor woman using a walker to go into the store. Luckily me and one other fine gentleman helped her in. Others kept walking by. I asked if she needed any help with shopping. She politely declined my offer and said thank you.
As a former 1st responder. It's in my nature and train of thought to help someone who is in trouble. I don't pass judgment. Everything okay? Need me to stay until other help arrives? Stuff like that. And said parties are always thankful.
I guess it depends what ones classes as older (some 'kids' of 20, class 40 as as 'old') Zen. (That being said, I have little excuse - now being 60+ ((Who knows where the time goes))) I think it depends on the parenting and teen-aging of change - 'Primary to secondary' school (or US equivilant) "Teach you chlldren-well" ... indeed I have found and have differenct experieriences with young(/er) people some are attentive, some indifferent - although this is also applicable with adults too
i would really rather see everyone being considerate of everyone without bias or preference, instead of it just being more for certain groups like old people or just people who do more to earn it. its the whole thing, the whole quality of what life is like to live it, how much people are or fail to be considerate of each other. that word respect is a kind of one way thing, and it really needs to be both ways and in all directions.
The entire world had been asked in 2020+ to look after the generation that went to Berlin to get shot at for all of our lands during the great wars but there were riots about it. How can delusional people not be committed on the grounds of refusing 2 lifesaving injections if that very generation had to be shot in the head and jailed for refusing to go to war?
While I’m not an oldster quite yet, this subject is very close to my heart because while I had dozens of friend’s growing up, my closest friend was my 75 year old neighbor who lived with his two middle-aged daughters. He was always outside working in his vegetable garden so we’d talk for what seemed like hours. Maybe he saw me as the grandson he never had because his daughters never married and never had kids i.e. spinsters. I don’t know, but I never saw him as old man just the kindest person you’d ever want to meet. It’s something you carry it with you for the rest of your life. Btw My parents explained to me that he personally killed a petition circulating around the neighborhood when they first moved in back in 69’. The first black family in an all-white neighborhood - I came along six years later
Back in the day when I was growing up, there was 'respect' for the older generations, but since we now have mobile 'smart' (ha) 'phones, most of the yooth of today walk around with their eyes (and head) buried in the screen on their mobiles and don't look where they are, where they're going, and are spacially unaware. Since my mobility is not that clever anymore, I can't dodge out of their way fast enough to avoid a potential collision. Which is why whenever I see anyone approaching me with their head buried in a mobile 'phone - I shout at them "Head up, eyes front, look where you're going" !!!
