Does the saying "You should respect your elders" still hold true today?

@sharoonyasir

One thing that never fails to amaze and inspire me is the @ecotrainquestion of the week. Week after week, the wonderful @eco-alex and other passengers from my favorite train keep having fantastic questions from the qotw that really inspire me to think from different perspectives. This week, the qotw is based on a topic really close to my heart:

Does the saying "You should respect your elders" still hold true today?

Since I wasn't able to take part in the last 2 qotws, I was more excited to participate in this one and especially since the topic is quite an important one. Here's my take on it.

@stortbeker

This post is a reply to the Question of the Week by @ecotrain, who prompts an interesting topic to write about each week. While I usually just read the amazing responses, this time I don't want to miss out posting my own two cents. This weeks the question was regarding respecting our elders. Is it an outdated concept, or something still advisable today?

The Quick Answer:

Why we should respect our elders? Because they are people like us, living beings, and entities of this world. Just like youngsters, horses, bears, cacti, or silica. And that alone deserves respect! Why we shouldn't? I'd say for any additional reason, generally speaking, that is. Of course, each individual has some unique attributes, which may deserve additional respect (or even the contrary if that shall be the case), but that all depends on who they are, what they've done, and for what reason.

@clara-andriessen

Leaving our parents house,
breaking with habits which were given to us, yet do not belong to us.
Opening up to the love of the Greatest Parent of all,
who birthed not only us but whole worlds,
spinning in the cosmos,
Who has been patiently waiting for us to remember who we are.
And regaining respect for our earthly parents,
through this recovered selflove,
is the best way in which I know to respect our elders.

@mountainjewel

This week I'm really excited to write about the Ecotrain Question of the Week:

Now my approach to this will be unconventional (what's new?!)... here goes!

I do believe that this saying holds true, but not in the traditional way.
I believe we should respect our elders, but this comes with a caveat of defining who our elders are.

Frankly, I don't believe many of the people in our cultures who have reached a certain age are truly elders.

I think many older people are upholding existing paradigms and old traditions bent on destruction of the earth- these are not my elders.

@likedeeler

Interesting question and one where the answer you give might change in the course of your lifetime, according to where you are on your own personal time line. 😉
Since I am in the second half of my life now, at least that´s what I assume at 54, I have acquired a bit of wisdom of old age myself and I also tend to expect and demand some respect from younger people now, or better, I don´t really like disrespect, but then, who does?
That´s probably a law of life, to make up for declining physical abilities you want to be respected for whatever you think your achievements in life are, and if there aren´t any, at least for making it that far.

Many people of my generation in my country have always had a problem with respect for elders because of our unique history.
When I was a young adolescent and learned about the horrors of the Holocaust in school, I was of course shocked and worried about the role my elders had played in Nazi Germany. We even have a name for that generation in German, Tätergeneration, the generation of the perpetrators.

@trucklife-family

Elders what does that mean?,for now lets look at it as meaning all old people as in the elderly.

When I was growing up it was pretty common to be told that one must respect their elders. I just accepted that this was the way that it was, however that was not what I saw happening. It seemed to me that once you got older you were seen as a burden and generally shoved to the back of the house or in to a nursing home.

I had only one grand parent alive when I was younger, my grandmother on my mothers side and she was amazing. Always happy, cracking jokes, I really did love to spend time with her, she was the one person I always felt safe with and knew that she would keep me safe. She went out of her way to help others and she looked after some of the older generation in her local village, up until she became too old herself to do so.I had a lot of respect for her. If all elders were like her then yes they do deserve the up most respect.

@eco-alex

Respect, dear Elder.
You have survived this life,
You have passed all the challenges that this world has tested you with,
Because you still stand here today.
You have witnessed great changes,
You have lived through world war, desperate poverty, and incredible technological change.
You have seen this world,
In ways I will never know.

This world is changing moment by moment,
And you are still here,
Standing, listening, witnessing.
Wisdom is not something to be learned,
Wisdom is earned,
Through decades of experience.

@celestialcow

This Weeks Ecotrain question of the week is 'does respecting your elders still hold true today?' I had to answer this weeks question as this is something I have struggled with my whole life.

Growing up in a place (East London) and being educated to the age of 14 in an environment where the kids ruled the classroom and there was little respect for Teachers you can probably see why my first impressions of life was to respect no one especially not 'elders'. Elders where authority figures, who were boring, limiting and had no clue what our reality was really like.

@thegreens

To respect is to admire someone or something deeply as a result of their abilities, qualities or achievements. It's to have due regards for something or someone.
Generally, respect is a positive thinking, feeling, word or action shown towards something or someone but do we really have respect for people?
In a bid to answer the EcoTrain Question of the Week, I will be looking at Respect for elders and respect for the eldest, Mother Earth!

Does the saying "You should respect your elders" still hold true today? NO! NO! NO!

I think the saying is gradually losing its meaning in today's society because more and more young people believe they can live their lives in freedom and treat their elders with lack of respect and courtesy.

@hopehuggs

I am Not a Lemon!

I remember as a child, this elderly man holding a door open for my parents, my older brother and me and my parents said "thank you' and my brother said "thank you' and I didn't as my parents and brother had already said thank you, they didn't need my thanks as well.

As I walked away I heard him mutter very loudly "I have a not a lemon, I'm not holding this door open for you for my health, kids, today have no respect."

I turned around when I heard him say that and he said "yes, you have no respect."

I have no idea why this scenario is sketched on my memory, but the amount of times I say to my own kids that "I am not a lemon" is quite a lot.