Random Thoughts #4

Whenever you’re addressing an elderly person, especially when you’re conveying something which seems to be in the tone of advising them or pointing out some mistake they did or giving suggestions, try to be humble and respect the fact that they’re elderly to you and also convey this respect for their experience.

Maybe you want them to take the message so seriously. Maybe you are talking facts and maybe you have the evidences or assumptions with you. Maybe you’re talking with reference to something that happened in your life. Maybe you have crossed a very difficult path and you know things better than the other person. Still, if you really want to help them out, do appreciate their experience and convey this to them. You obviously don’t want them to embrace their egoistic side, avoid your valuable message and end up falling into the pit which you feared not to happen to them.

It is completely fine to be egoistic in this matter. An elderly person will have a mind-set that they’re more capable of handling emotions and their experience will feed their ego. Let’s take a simple example, let’s say that you were in 5th or 6th standard when you remotely understood or you started thinking/hearing words like Kiss, Love and Sex. Or let’s say that you started using or hearing swear words. It seemed normal for you then. But when you’ve become a matured person relatively, seeing another kid who is studying in 5th or 6th, talking about kiss, love, sex and using swear words is going to make you feel weird. You’ll probably be pissed off and you will be worried about the parenting or the environment the kid is having. Even if you know the fact that you were like him, you’ll still feel a bit weird by that. This ego is pretty normal.

Kids aged 5, these days are using Ipads and Iphones which you may feel is very bad but you have to understand that there was a period when people thought movies and television were not for children.

This ego is because of our understanding that we think that we’re in the right age to know or feel about something and hence a younger person would not be able to relate to it. This sort of judging comes pretty naturally these days. People are going to come to you and start sharing their personal problems or start talking about something important and the minute they come to know that you’re too young, they’re going to dismiss you.

Conveying the fact that you’re respecting their experience has nothing to do with the frankness of your message or the tone of your message. Maybe the person is going to dismiss your message regardless of you stating it or not, but it is always better to state this and then at the least feel satisfied that you’ve tried helping them out in some way honestly. “Age is just a number” will sound cool only in some situations and mostly only to you in this regard.