Day 26- You are not Forgotten

Lying within thousands of care homes across this nation are the forgotten generation, the ones hidden from view.

How can one forget a whole generation, the elderly? How can they mean so little to people after all they have suffered, endured and given as gifts to their families, friends, nation and society?

Why are they forgotten? Because the world cares more for profit and efficiency and usefulness than the commodities of love, care, kindness, tenderness and faithfulness. They are seen like vegetables who no longer look appealing to the eye and are put in the ‘past their best box’ in a supermarket aisle, for everything has to be about the external look and being appealing.

And yet everyone will one day, if they live long enough, have wrinkles or lose a little of their sight or hearing or memory. It will only be then, that many elderly will realise, maybe for the first time, that it is what is inside them, their soul, that really counts.

However, so few take time to look into another’s soul or allow them to share the golden nuggets of wisdom of life that they have accumulated to themselves over many long, hard years. They have honey which, if we don’t harvest, will go to waste. Imagine spending a whole lifetime making honey but society caring nothing for gathering that wisdom before they die.

How can societies have wandered so far into false ways of being and thinking and valuing to put away one of their most valuable resources and pools of hope, light and freedom into homes that few if any visit.

They have a sweetness to offer the young. They have the gift of perspective. They are the overcomers of life and have faced hundreds of different types of daily deaths and have come through them and out the other side. At a time when so many young are struggling with fear and anxiety, these precious souls have tablets of hope that could relieve and even cure many young of their symptoms.

Yet no pharmaceutical company has come and bottled their wisdom or their stories of life, courage, fortitude, resilience and overcoming to help inspire this new anxious generation. Society always has all the medicines she needs to help cure every care or ailment, but it doesn’t always come out of the bottles we imagine.

Allow the elderly their rightful place in this, our society, as elders, as teachers, as encouragers, as pragmatist, as authors and painters and scholars of life. Don’t waste this precious resource or let the honey die without it ever being tasted, cherished or enjoyed.

Do something positive and practical to reach one elderly person to tell them that they have not been forgotten, at least not by you.

How do you view those in their older years?

What place do you think they should hold in society and their family?

What might you do to let them know that they are not forgotten? How might you gather their honey?