Rule #1: Respect your elders

June 22, 2022

By Marissa Armoogam. As a child growing up, I remember one rule we always had to adhere to was to respect our elders. I grew up in a time when you answered a call with, “Yes Mom, yes Dad, yes Aunty,” or the title or name for whomever was the person calling. I never said, “She said,” my grandmother would instantly ask me, “Who is ‘she’… the cat’s mother?” Up to this day I have no idea what that means, but I know it meant that I was disrespectful by addressing someone as “she”.

Over the past few years I have seen the slow and steady decay of the level of respect paid to the adults and the elderly by our younger generation, even the respect they pay to their peers is questionable. This type of behaviour is spread across the entire field of young people, but as any illness, it is something if not treated at an early stage will spread rapidly and then symptoms become a full blown ailment.

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Respect begins at home

A saying which I firmly believe in is the statement “Charity begins at home”. This phrase can be used to represent many different areas of our everyday existence, our mannerisms, speech patterns, hygiene, ideals, values and morals all are sculpted right in our very homes. The way we treat the ones we live with showing value or lack of towards them is packed and taken with us as we leave the home and enter the wider public.

The elders in our society were once the young and able-bodied as you and I now are, some day to come, we too, will be the fragile and dependant elderly and our children will be our caretakers. These past contributors to our society and economy need us to be the tender hand that carries them, the soft voice that comforts them and the strong heart that protects them. Once we are able to do this freely we can be sure our elderly will be able to age with a much deserved sense of dignity.

Teaching lesson for our children

We must never allow them to feel as though it is an imposition or a burden to have them in our lives, we can look at it from the angle… the way we treat our elders now is a live teaching session for our children and soon those lessons will be put to use when we become the elderly. So as I mentioned earlier… “charity begins at home”.

June 2016 – Issue 22 www.sweettntmagazine.com