I thought it was yesterday

IMAY have stated this before – but bear with me, I am getting older, so I am prone to repeat myself – toddlers are unimpressive to say the least. have seen people fawning over babies that can recite the alphabet or Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Kubla Khan, but I am not that easily impressed. That tiny individual with the leaky mouth and leaky bottom only has a few months’ worth of memories to sift through, so obviously the information is readily available.

Someone asked me how can I possibly remember so many things from my past, and the simple answer is that 30 or 40 years ago seems like yesterday.

Older folk have 70, 80 or even 90 or more years’ worth of memories, experiences and ideas stored in their brains; yet when they sometimes struggle to find a bit of information in the vast warehouse of knowledge, we tend to say that their advanced age is making them forgetful.

Nonsense! The only thing they are victims of is having failed to properly file the information in their minds over the years. Of course dementia is another kettle of fish altogether, but generally society looks at old folk as past their prime and fit for abandonment … Except on Mother’s or Father’s Day, when the indifference of an entire year is magically washed away with a card, a bunch of flowers or a short visit.

This became such a problem that back in 2013 an “Elderly Rights Law” was passed in China. The law warned adult children to “never neglect or snub elderly people” and mandated that they visit their elderly parents often, regardless of how far away they live. The law included enforcement mechanisms, too: Offspring who failed to visit faced potential punishment ranging from fines to jail time.

We can only hope that in the last four years Chinese adult children, being afraid of fines or imprisonment, made time to visit the elderly and that this has become a habit, even to the point of them forgetting that there is even such a law.

France passed a similar decree in 2004 requiring its citizens to keep in touch with their geriatric parents. The law was enacted firstly because France had the highest rate of pensioner suicides in Europe and secondly because in the aftermath of a heat wave that killed 15 000 people – most of them elderly – many of the deceased had been dead for weeks before they were eventually found.

These days youth is celebrated and the elderly are discarded in care facilities and nursing homes – as a result ageing can become a shameful experience.

Wrinkles, twisted fingers, bleary eyes and a slow gait tend to be regarded with distaste in our hot, thriving, youthful societies, and the elderly are often depicted in a negative light in popular culture, if it is not entirely ignored. What is hugely worrying is that because the youthful, energetic, attractive generation currently running the country looks down on the aged, old people themselves feel that there’s something wrong with them and they’re losing value.

The good news is that this is not so all over the world. In Greek culture, for example, old age is honoured and celebrated, and respect for elders is central to the family.

Here’s a caution to those of the youthful, energetic, attractive generation and those currently in power who have a say in how the elderly are treated: The system we are creating, the culture that we encourage, the mindsets that we are promoting are going to absorb us one day.

Old age is not optional, it’s inevitable … we have to ask the simple question: “How would I like to be treated one day when I have lost my youth, energy and good looks?” The answer lies in how I treat those who already have today.