Why Should We Respect Our Elders?
In an orderly community, elderly people are entitled to great respect at the hands of the younger generation. We receive many benefits from our elders. Besides specific acts of kindness done individually, our elders are, as it were, the custodians of the honor and well-being of the community in general.
We always have to look to those older than ourselves, and therefore in experience, for information concerning the traditions, customs, in fact, all matters affecting the common weal.
We constantly seek advice also from elders with regard to personal affairs. Their wider experience of life qualifies them to give counsel. A young man or woman, however clever and well up in book learning, has still a great deal to learn of the world from others. Life is in itself a school and a study.
A young person after passing one or two petty examinations, or even before passing, thinks himself very wise and despises the old uneducated men as he calls them. This is not a sign of greatness at all. Remember:
Knowledge is proud that it knows so much;
Wisdom is humble that it knows no more!
It is, in fact, little knowledge that intoxicates the brain. A young man or women must avoid vanity.
Another cause of disregard of elders is to be found in selfishness. A bad man dislikes those who give him good advice, but he has to pay severely for it.
The lives of our elders furnish us, moreover, with valuable lessons of what we should do as well as what we should avoid doing. Their successes and failures are alike object lessons to us which we should carefully study.
Our elders deserve our profound respect because:
They are the custodians of the achievements of the past,
We look to them for counsel, and
Their lives furnish us with lessons of conduct.
