ARE THEY CHILDREN?

ARE THEY CHILDREN?

It has become kind of fashion today (even yesterday) to say in a condescending and patronizing manner 

that the 'senior citizens are in their second childhood; that they are children.

The sub-text or hidden agenda of such an utter lie is the innate desire to completely negate the individual identity of the elderly persons, their likes and dislikes, their freedom of expression, their freedom to choose whom to speak and whom not, their freedom to have a view of their own, their freedom to differ, their freedom to argue, their freedom to act and even think.

This is how we treat our children, don’t we?

We want our children to ‘behave’, don’t we?

We get immense satisfaction that children depend on us for each and everything, for it makes us feel like some sort of chief protagonists.

And, this is how we want our elders to be when actually they are senior citizens – having the right to vote and also the right to think and act.

Just because due to age they may be in need of assistance, in return, they are expected to completely surrender their freedom and become absolute subordinates.

If the elders make some critical observations about the youngsters it is at once called unwarranted born of generation gap. Isn’t it proper for us to apply the same logic or reasoning with reference to youngsters making some very general, shallow and over simplistic observations about the Elders?

Having crossed the various stages of life, isn’t it cruelly absurd to call them children?

Recently in Facebook I came across an observation, of course uttered in the inevitable patronizing and condescen ding tone that Elders (poor they)while away their time watching stupid TV Serials.

While we should not be drawn into an unwanted Elders vs Youngsters debate, in reply to the above-mentioned observation I can’t help but say that watching TV Serials is far better than posing ‘this way and that way’, posting selfies in the facebook and blogspot and indulging in self-aggrandizement.