A reflection on youthfulness

Tomorrow is International Youth Day:

Sachitra Mahendra

This life cycle is very strange. Kids are so fond of their grandparents, but that inches away gradually when they reach late teens. Late teens, known as the most dangerous period in one’s life, are more tending towards the sense of freedom.

So starts the difference between the two camps: generation gap. Their tracks are not parallel; they do not and cannot choose each others’ track.

All the same elders should be mindful that they passed the youth-hood, while the youths should know they will reach old age too.

Issues arise when they do not like to concentrate on this fact.

The talk of youths, therefore, cannot be done without reference to elders.

The generation gap is best understood by studying the behaviour patterns between parents and children. The conflict of these generations increases as the age gap between the generations goes up. Handling both elders and youths should be likened to walking on eggshells.

Both these generations are in a blissful period: elders have more experience and maturity, while youth have more mental and physical strength. But they both have to watch out for any shortcomings such as feeling grudges against each other. Feeling grudges to each other naturally comes with the thought difference.

Both these groups are generally inflexible to each other. This causes an alienation in both generations; elders feel this a lot, as they become lonelier as years sift by. So youth have to take the gauntlets to handle the elder generation soft and careful.

This difference wakes up when generations evolve. Evolution of generation does not just mean the aging of decades. Many things change with decades. Technology improves, but ethics go down, some say, though this is a disputed opinion. Some youths are more poised than elders.

What is positive and vibrant for the elder is not so for the youth, and it is the other way around too. The problem is elders have a natural find-fault eye, though luckily a few of our elders are above their natural instincts.

It is difficult to draw the line between elders and youngsters. Though there is no hard and fast rule, we can roughly demarcate an age border: youngsters and elders respectively under and above 50.

This is why in many countries like England, children leave parents at 18. Parents should respect the right of their offspring to freedom. But in some countries, parents still like to interfere into their children’s business.

For instance there are mothers who still want to check if her son is drunk, when he has a wife and grown ups. Pestering others is not a good habit, especially parents should not exploit their privilege of being the senior elders.

In the workforce of a country, both youths and elders are equally precious. Elders may not have the required physical strength, but they have experience in their fields. Youths have the physical strength as well as the ability to think along the modern times. Most elders find it difficult to work with the modern technology such as the Internet and mobile phones. The typewriter came as a new technology to our elders, whereas the youths find computer as the new technology.

Both elders and youths think they know enough and matured. For that matter some elders do not have faith in what youths carry out, since they are insufficient. Experience doesn’t always help, new thinking is required too.

Today’s technology develops faster than in the past. Many youths use new gadgets such as ipods, Bluetooth and palmtop. This irritates most of the elders, because they are not in the ideal frame of mind to embrace these technologies. This could well happen to the youth who will be an elder in decades to come.

What today’s youth mostly enjoy were not available in early 20th century. Elders did not have easy access to pornography.

They did not use mobile phones. They did not use computers. Many elders still do not use mobile phones and computers. These elders have two camps: some do criticise these utilities and some do not. As for drugs, pornography and alcohol and so on, it does not depend on your age. There are those in both camps who abhor them. One hotel manager revealed that he finds more hard liquor left over after youth get-togethers.

The youth are not fond of homilies. They need guidance without being invaded on their territory. Elders should make sure they approach the youths with due respect, the same way they expect it from.

Both young and elder are interdependent. No one cannot survive without each other. Good mutual understanding between each other could lead both camps to the hilltop.