THE UNPARALLELED GENERATION GAP

When a zoo is visited and we see two lions in a cage where one seems to be old and the other looks fresh and young we tend to be attentive towards the young lion. We get attracted ourselves towards the young lion due to its majestic look and roar without no crack. We focus our perception towards the weakness of the old lion which in turn manipulates our thoughts and reflects in the form of disinterest by ignoring the notion of it being a strong predator once. Even when we witness a lion hunting a deer, we tend to oversee the deer as weak, vulnerable and develops sympathy for a slight moment. Afterwards, we praise the lion for its skills and forgets about the prey. 

Likewise, old age is accompanied by extensive problems related to social, health and psychological. As the instance mentioned above, old age is perceived as a vulnerable stage in human life. Sometimes, in certain cases, old people becomes the prey for young people and that is when elderly abuse cases comes into light. Consistently, in order to dispose power over something old people are chosen as prey because of the presumption that they won't react. And the administrations or law makers also has categorised them into vulnerability group to let them avail the benefits of welfare programmes. Usually when a human age, it is said that they are evolving into a child once again, returning to the first stage of their life cycle and due to this reason they need more help like a small child who need help or assistance with walking, eating and to carry out life activities. Maybe they might even have to start learn to talk once again. Therefore, this idea of them being weak gives advantage for young people to be perceived strong. Even in the work culture, young people are given more priority for jobs irrespective of the experience and also for many occupations the age preference is given for adults and young candidates. The reflection of weakness in the eyes of the old people and scintillating sight of young people we tend to give attention to. Even for an occasion, we let the old people be cornered for their weakness while young people carry out the works forgetting they also have dignity.

The society has fixed this misconception towards the section of old which has led to this problem of gap between old and young people and them being given more value. When we try to change this notion and respect them for their life experiences and contributions given in this world they can enjoy their last years with dignity.