In my culture, we give the highest respect to our elders because they have paved the road in life for us, the young and new generation to carry on "legacy". Not just anyone's legacy, but our legacy, the legacy of our families and that of our mother land. It's heart breaking to know that many young adults and adolescents of today do not give their elders the respect that they deserve let alone take the time to get to know them and or listen to what they have to say. It's an alarming matter to know and realize when all the elders are passing on, taking with them the key to our identity for the future. Why? Because this new generation is not caring enough to spend a little bit of time to ask. I have noticed that the elders will only share to those who ask, simply because they don't want to waste any more time chasing people to sit down and learn. They don't want deep words to fall on deaf ears!
Did they not earn their place in this life that they do not deserve your attention or your ears? I can't help but to grit my teeth and bite my tongue when I hear a young individual disrespecting their grandparents. The questions that I hit them with is "What do you know that your elders don't already know? What do you know of them to judge them and publicly humiliate them the way you do? And of what time do you deserve to spend with them if this is how you are going to treat your elders?"
What I have today, my skills, my talents, my blessings, all that I have were granted to me by God through my elders. Through their blessings and their prayers. How could I know God without my grandparents and my parents to show me the way to know and communicate with him, how could I know to be respectful and mindful of people without my elders, or even how could I have known anything without their knowledge? I learned a great deal of my culture from my Aunts and Uncles who have passed away. They did their due diligence in life and I was blessed to have the opportunity to have asked them, to have been able to communicate with them and also listen to their stories and their wise advice.
People ask me how I came to be how I am. All I tell them is that I listened very intently to my elders and I took their advice and applied them. Some advice I didn't understand until the situation happened to me, but what they were saying to me all along was truth. They were not psychics, maybe some of them were in tune with their sixth sense, but its all about what they endured in their time. Their time, our time, there is no difference when it comes to the matter of human socialization and interaction.
My grandma and my grandpa's nieces are women of such empowering ideals and ethics that they stood their ground in what they believed in for the honor of family name and for our family in general. This is why my mom's side of the family is women dominated. We lived by a code and we had standards to uphold as a clan due to our responsibilities. And this is what sets us aside from the rest. And from them I learned, you are never a leader if you cannot serve and you will never have anything until you learn to honor God by honoring your elders. "Servant Leadership" is the ethics in which my grandfather followed and taught all of us grandchildren.
I value elderly advice as if it were gold. I hold what they have to say to me in high regards because I know that they have been there and they have done seen it all. I would be stupid to not listen. The stories of our history is going with them to the grave. But no one seems alarmed, and when they pass on, everyone shows up to pay their respects and to gain pity me attention because of their relation. Shame on all of you who do that and didn't even once spend time to get to know your elders! We are entering a time of no guilt and pity me days. We are losing our grip with our truth being immersed in our egos, our fake selves. If your elders don't fit in your schedule, then where does God fit? Just something to think about.
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