The Dell

Aside from the aging population and resultant economic challenges, and any crippling  ill health, I am all for living a long life.

I think that we underestimate the value of old people. Their experience is invaluable. From business to marriage to history – well, life really.

We tend to think that what we are experiencing a emotinally brutial break up for the first time. And it is the first time for you. So there is no denying the importance of such an event. And the toll that it takes on you.

But ask someone older and if you are able to listen in the midst of your pain, you will hear that you will survive this. And that the lessons you will have learnt will be with you, to strengthen you, for the rest of your life – so that you can pass on the wisdom to someone younger.

It is of no use to be a proponent of living longer if we keep putting the elders into care homes that act as waiting rooms for the grim reaper.

We need to involve our elders in as many ways as possible in the society and community. And we need to encourage the young to engage with this enormous untapped well spring of experience.

And don’t think that because someone was a business owner or leader many years ago that they may be irrelevant. They may not be au fait with AI and the rest of technology in business, but they will know all there is to know about customers and managing staff and giving the best service. They call these skills ‘soft’.

These are real skills.  And the aged know them all – tried and tested.

If we are all supposed to live lone lives, then let there be a younger generation that realises the depth and wealth of knowledge that the elders have. And engage freely with that knowledge.