Topic: Power
When I hold the hand of a child who is looking up at me in trust, I am in awe. My awe mirrors that child's awe. I am in awe that he trusts me. She may be in awe at how anyone so wrinkled and grey could still be alive!
Very few young people keep a sense of awe when it comes to their elders. That requires maturity that usually takes many years to develop. Western culture values youth and book learning more than it values age and experience.
Even worse to me, all cultures seem not to trust nor to listen well to young people who have experience beyond their years, due to the traumas of neglect or abuse. These kids are hard to trust, to be sure, when their behavior masks the truths that their stories tell. If we, as elders, can find ways to see beyond the behavior long enough to gain from what they have to say, then we certainly speed along the process of maturity that allows them to listen again with awe.
Neither those of us who are old from both years and experience nor the youth who do not have the years, but are "rich" in experience hold in our hands absolute truth. What we can have in common, if we dare, is a willingness to challenge the current short-sightedness that can exist in both the young and the old--especially when it comes to institutional short-sightedness.
Oh, that we may all grow in the skill of listening and considering what new truths we can learn in that process!!
