respect your elders, and admire them… it is the begining of wisdom

By now you have no doubt heard about the mugger from New York City who brazenly attacks old women, one of which was 101 years old.  It has caused quite an uproar all over the country and rightly so, we have to be asking ourselves where has common decency gone?  Not that any mugging is acceptable, but to force your will upon these harmless individuals has got to be what one article claims was “the lowest of the low”.

It used to be that an elderly person was treated with dignity and respect but more and more I see young people behaving like they have no conscience, no morals, no reverence for the aged.  Our society puts no importance on it, our hearts and minds are not trained to recognize them as a valuable resource.  I wonder what the generation that comes from this one will be like.  Will senior citizens become likened to so much garbage,  only to be cast aside and forgotten?  Perhaps that time is already upon us.

We are talking about a generation passing that saw the Roaring 20’s, the Great Depression and World War II.  They saw the first movies being made, heard the radio play songs of the Golden Age, listened to music on 78 rpm records and saw black and white television in it’s infancy.  They knew of communism and McCarthyism, Korea, the Bay of Pigs and 3 assassinations of our nation’s leaders.  They witnessed the New Deal and polio vaccines, the Empire State Building and the Hoover Dam.  They even saw electricity, the telephone and mass transit become staples of the American landscape. 

Our grandparents and great-grandparents watched Bogart and Bacall, Hepburn and Tracy, Gable and Lombard and listened to Frank Sinatra, Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller and the Lennon Sisters.  They watched Joe Louis beat Max Schmeling, they watched Jesse Owens win the Olympics, they watched the incredible Jim Thorpe play football and John Glenn circle the earth.  They cheered one and all with the voice of their generation, one that certainly mattered… a generation that persevered and came off victorious. 

They saw all of that and so much more…  now are they to be reduced to brutalization by some cowardly crack addict walking around in a man’s skin wasting the air that he breathes?

We are shocked now, but will that wear off?  We are outraged now,  but will we soon become complacent?  I hope not.  But change begins with you and me.  We have to teach ourselves and our children that when we treat others and particularly the elderly with respect we are in turn respecting ourselves and our heritage.  As the Bible says, “it is the beginning of wisdom”.  We can’t tolerate the belittling of the human family, because really… we are all brothers made from the same stock.

I hope we will take pride in the elderly and renew our affection towards them.  I hope that our society will view them as national treasures, time keepers from an era passing too quickly by.  I hope there is a renewed sense of pride and accomplishment in our senior citizens, a geniune warmth in their reflection upon the rest of us.

 … and I hope they catch the bastard that did this shameful thing.

 peace.